Black cloud from the huge fire

Frank McDonald recalls the dramatic hours and days of coveringthe 'Betelgeuse' disaster.

Frank McDonald recalls the dramatic hours and days of coveringthe 'Betelgeuse' disaster.

What I remember most about the Betelgeuse disaster was the arc of black smoke that hung over west Cork that morning, with Bantry as its vanishing point - and the fact that there were only "wind-up" telephones in the town at the time.

It was also the first big story I had covered for The Irish Times. Though barely a wet week in the paper, I was woken at 3 a.m. by a phone call from Andrew Hamilton, then an assistant news editor, to be told an oil tanker had blown up in Bantry Bay. Could I be ready to leave in an hour?

In the pre-motorway pre-bypass era it took us a full five hours to get there. The black cloud created by the huge fire was visible above Bandon as we drove through the town. By then, it was clear that there had been a huge loss of life - at least 50 people had died.

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Seven local men were listed as missing, presumed dead. One of the most poignant stories involved the wife of one of them, Mrs Teresa Shanahan, who gave birth to her seventh child, a baby boy, in the early hours of the morning - not long after the disaster that killed her husband.

Bantry was in a state of shock. Though it had played host to the huge Gulf Oil terminal on Whiddy Island for more than a decade, this was the first serious accident. Helicopters, boats and two teams of sub-aqua divers were already scouring the choppy waters in search of bodies.

Only the bow of the Betelgeuse was still above water beside the warped oil jetty on Whiddy Island. Globules of crude oil could be seen floating on the surface around the terminal but, mercifully, none of the oil storage tanks had gone on fire as a result of the explosion.

It was estimated that there were 40,000 tonnes of oil still on board the wrecked tanker and that it was leaking at the rate of five tonnes per hour. This was to become a big issue locally as the authorities seemed ill-equipped to prevent or even contain serious oil pollution in Bantry Bay.

The harbour authority had no power to enforce safety regulations in the bay and no role in dealing with the disaster or its aftermath. Like so many other "authorities", it was toothless. Even the booms used to control the spread of the oil slick had to be sent to Bantry.

Though much of the leaking oil was burned off by the huge fire on board the Betelgeuse, some of it came ashore. Two days later, with stormy weather still hampering salvage efforts, patches of crude oil with the appearance of silted seaweed could be seen at Snave Cove.