Creeslough: ‘In the class they have a little teddy unicorn on Shauna’s chair’

A soft toy was placed in the seat where Shauna Flanagan Garwe (5) should have been, at Scoil Mhuire national school in Creeslough on Monday morning.

Parents collecting their children from the small school at 2pm said members of the junior infants class were “too young” to comprehend what had happened in their village last Friday afternoon, or the reason for their classmate’s absence, but the parents “explained it the best we can”.

Shauna died with her father, Robert Garwe (50) and eight others in an explosion at the north Donegal village’s Applegreen service station and grocery shop, shortly after 3pm. She and her dad had called in after school had finished to buy a birthday cake for her mother.

“They are so young they don’t really understand,” said one mother. “She knew about the crash because she had seen it on the news. I just explained to her that Shauna has gone to holy God. She went on playing then.

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“In the class they have a little teddy unicorn on Shauna’s chair and they were told they could give the unicorn hugs if they missed Shauna.”

An older woman, collecting her grandson said he was “not really aware” of the weekend’s events.

“I just missed the explosion myself by about 10 minutes.” She usually collects her older grandson at the school at 3pm and would “take him to the shop for a treat”.

“But because it was a bad evening I went to the shop first before coming up to collect [him]” and then they went straight back home, avoiding the site of the blast. “It is very scary.”

‘Talking about it, the memories are raw and it’s hard to comprehend it all. It’s hard to hear the stories of the funeral arrangements and the stories. It’s very highly charged and emotional’

Yards away a temporary sign had been erected, pointing into St Michael’s Terrace, saying simply: “Wake”. People arrived and left throughout Monday, to the home Martin McGill (49) had shared with his mother Mary, for whom he was a carer. He was in the Applegreen station having ordered a takeaway across the road, to get cash from the ATM.

His will be the second in an agonising marathon of funerals this week, most of them likely to be in Creeslough’s St Michael’s Church. The rosary is being said at 10pm every night here, to allow people to come together, and has been accepting donations of groceries particularly for older parishioners as the explosion has meant the loss of the village’s only shop.

On Tuesday morning, the first funeral will be that of Jessica Gallagher (24), from the townland of Killoughcarran near Creeslough, who was also the first casualty recovered from the disaster. A fashion designer, who had trained in Paris and Shanghai and had been due to start a job in Belfast, was visiting her boyfriend Conor McFadden in the apartments above the station when the explosion happened. He remains in a critical condition in the burns unit of St James’s Hospital in Dublin.

At the church people arrived through the day, to light candles and pray. One woman in her 60s arrived in a distressed state in mid-afternoon. She described how her loved one was “gone”, how the family was struggling to cope and how she had to come to the church to pray, and for some time alone.

Another woman arrived, embracing and holding her. “It’s just awful, it’s just awful, it’s just awful,” she said.

Parish priest Rev John Joe Duffy, who will celebrate the funeral Masses for several of the victims, said there was “no textbook” to prepare any priest for such intensity of tragedy. Asked how he would approach the funerals, he said he had already met families to discuss what they wanted.

“You prepare by visiting the families in their homes and just try and give them as much time as you can but that time is so limited here. There’s not enough time to prepare in the way one would ordinarily prepare because this is way beyond anything anyone could ever imagine. This would be a terrible disaster if it happened in a big city but this has happened in a very tiny community that is so small. The grief and the pain is just unimaginable.”

He, with Bishop of Raphoe Alan McGuckian and Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin, visited Scoil Mhuire on Monday to meet parents and teachers.

They earlier prayed at the church where 10 red candles will burn on the altar through the week – each a light to remember one of the victims. At the scene of the tragedy, they spoke to Donegal County Council workers who were erecting hoarding to enclose the site, with a view to reopening the road, and to local men who had been the first on the scene on Friday afternoon.

Bernard McGinley, a father of three who works in construction, was at the site of the disaster within minutes of the blast and remained until Saturday evening. He thought he was coping “quite well” until Monday.

“Talking about it, the memories are raw and it’s hard to comprehend it all. It’s hard to hear the stories of the funeral arrangements and the stories. It’s very highly charged and emotional.”

Living nearby, he heard and assumed something had happened to his own house. When his father called asking had he heard “that bang” he realised something must have happened in the village.

“I jumped in the car, came up the road and when I got to Creeslough... it was just an unmerciful sight. There were people in severe agony and pain, people walking about bewildered.

“A couple of guys were helping one fella in particular, to rescue him from under a roller door. Another guy needed a lift to be brought to safety. As soon as that was done we went inside. There was water coming out of everywhere. There were wires hanging everywhere. There were sparks. There were people crying for help. So we just tore into what we could.

“We were fortunate to come on a girl who was trapped behind shelving and we were able to rescue her, to take her out. Thankfully then we got the power turned off, the automatic generator turned off and we began to handle stuff out, break stuff up, take out blocks, debris to try and get to people who were trapped.”

What he saw and experienced was “horrific on reflection. At the time it was just a task that had to be done and we just cracked on with it... it’s more difficult now looking back on it. It sort of hits home.”

He knew all but one of the deceased, he says. “My daughter Alannah worked in the shop in the summertime. She’s 14. One of my friends, he arrived here [on Saturday] after work and the first thing he said to me, ‘Alannah wasn’t in the shop?’ And I knew Alannah wasn’t in the shop but it just knocked me back. I wasn’t prepared. It just dawned on me how close it could have been.”

The visit by Archbishop Martin, he said, was “a great help to the people of Creeslough”.

“Everybody wants to come and see it and share some of the burden, and I think that helps.”

He said he would avail of counselling made available by the HSE, in Creeslough Health Centre and in nearby Ards for those affected.

“I have friends who availed of it and they said it helped them a lot. There was so much to do for so long and when there are tasks to do, it’s relatively simple just to crack on and do it. It’s when it calms down and you reflect. This doesn’t go away. People will require help for an awful long time.”

He released emotion for the first time when he got home on Saturday night. “My three kids were there and some people say we’re not a very emotional people, but when I saw my three kids I knew that’s when it hit me and Alannah was the first to wrap her arms around me.

“Nobody is looking to be a hero here. I did what we had to do. It was just an awful event. I don’t understand how this little community will ever recover from it.”