Creeslough explosion: ‘These weren’t strangers to us; these were our own family’

Letterkenny University Hospital coped smoothly with the aftermath of the Creeslough explosion, in which a number of staff lost close family members.

It has treated eight survivors of the explosion, with two still in the hospital on Sunday evening, their conditions described as stable, and one having been transferred to Dublin for specialist care.

The hospital and its emergency department were having a busy Friday afternoon, with at least 30 people in, when word came through of what had happened in Creeslough.

General manager Seán Murphy and one of his emergency department consultants spoke to the patients present, telling them there may have been a major incident and the hospital needed to clear space for anticipated casualties.

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Additional beds

They asked anyone who felt their condition was not an emergency to go see a GP instead. Two-thirds elected to stay. Some, but not all, had already started treatment.

Contact was made with community healthcare organisations and older people’s services to put in additional beds, to which hospital patients could be transferred, thereby creating extra space for casualties. Extra GPs staffed out-of-hours services to further take pressure off the hospital. Through these efforts, about 10 extra beds were freed up.

“Everything went very smoothly and in accordance with the major incident plan. We set up a control centre, a relatives’ meeting area and we created extra capacity in theatres and wards and in the emergency department,” Mr Murphy told The Irish Times on Sunday.

He paid tribute to the “real professionalism and huge compassion” of the staff who dealt with the casualties coming in from the explosion.

Major incident

“This was a huge tragedy for the county and many of us were very directly affected through friends relatives and neighbours. These weren’t strangers we were dealing with; these were in many cases our own family.”

The hospital, along with others in the Saolta Hospital Group, has a major incident plan. Decisions about whether to classify an event as a major incident are normally made at the scene, he explained.

On Friday, the hospital was informed by the National Ambulance Service that a major incident had occurred. The hospital went on standby and remained in this mode throughout the incident.

“In reality, many aspects of a full major incident were enacted. But not all wards were affected, just paediatric and surgical, and changes were made in those areas,” Mr Murphy said.

As Friday night wore on, it became clear the hospital was not going to get more patients requiring treatment. Mr Murphy has organised a full debrief on Monday, and counselling is being provided for staff who need it.