A community was last night coming to terms with a tragedy which claimed the life of a young mother and her 3½-year-old daughter after their jeep was swept away in a fast-flowing torrent as they tried to cross a ford on their way to their home near Bantry, Co Cork.
Orla O'Driscoll, who was in her early 30s, and her daughter, Muire, perished in the tributary of the Borlin river after Ms O'Driscoll managed to push her son, Fionn (6), to safety just 100 yards from where her husband, Finbarr, was at home oblivious to the tragedy unfolding nearby.
The accident happened at about 1.45 p.m. yesterday as Ms O'Driscoll was returning to the couple's farmhouse home at Milleens, in the Borlin valley, some eight miles north-west of Bantry after she had collected Fionn from the Gaelscoil in Bantry.
It is understood that Ms O'Driscoll was crossing the ford when her Mitsubishi jeep got stuck.
She managed to get Fionn out and back to the bank from which they entered and she went back to get Muire and tried to hand her to Fionn.
But she was too heavy, and he couldn't hold her, so Ms O'Driscoll went back to jeep with the little girl.
She told Fionn to go and get help, and the little boy raced some 500 yards back on to the main Bantry-Kilgarvan road where he was found walking towards Coomhola by a local woman, Ms Vickey Flynn, who immediately pulled up beside him, and he told her what had happened.
Ms Flynn last night told The Irish Times: "I was driving home at around 2.10 p.m. when I saw this little boy crying in the rain. He had only one shoe and was soaking west so I stopped and asked him to get in, but he told me that his parents had told him it was dangerous to get into cars with strangers.
"He told me that his mom and his sister had been in the jeep but that they had been taken out to sea and that he was trying to get help.
"I was still trying to persuade him to get into the car when my father, Neil, came along and he realised where he was talking about when he mentioned that he lived at Milleens."
Ms Flynn persuaded Fionn to get into her car, got him out of his wet top and gave him her jumper to keep warm, while Mr Flynn drove up to Milleens to the ford to see if he could get to Ms O'Driscoll and her daughter, but there was no trace of the jeep.
"I waded in up to my waist, but I could see no sign of it. I reckon the water was probably about four or five feet deep at the centre, but it was moving with ferocious speed. That stream can fill up in no time and come down the mountain in a flash flood," said Mr Flynn.
"I could see Finbarr O'Driscoll across on the other bank and I shouted to him, but he couldn't hear me with the noise of the water so I gestured to him that I was going to ring him.
" The mobile service was down so I drove back down to the main road and down to Teddy O'Brien's shop and I rang from there and told him. That was the first he knew."
Mr Flynn then dialled 999, and the emergency services under Insp Pat Maher arrived to launch a search operation with up to 100 locals joining gardaí, Bantry Fire Brigade, Civil Defence and Red Cross in a search along the banks of the mountain tributary of Borlin river which enters the sea below Coomhola.
Locals and gardaí mounted watches on several bridges in an attempt to spot either Ms O'Driscoll or her daughter or the jeep being carried downstream, while members of Bantry Inshore Rescue and Goleen Cliff and Coastal Rescue teams also began searching the river banks.
An Irish Marine Emergency Services Rescue Sikorski helicopter also joined in the search, and at around 5.45 p.m. rescuers spotted the jeep caught in a rocky gully some 150 yards downstream.
As the flood receded and water levels dropped, it became apparent that the vehicle had received a terrible buffeting against the jagged rocky sides of the gully.
Rescuers searched the vehicle, but there was no sign of either Ms O'Driscoll or Muire. However, some 30 minutes later they found Muire about a quarter of a mile downstream, and emergency services tried to resuscitate her as they brought her to Bantry General Hospital. But she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
Searchers continued looking for Ms O'Driscoll and found her about a quarter of a mile farther downstream. She, too, was removed by ambulance to Bantry General Hospital where a local doctor pronounced her dead. Post-mortems on both will be carried out at Cork University Hospital this morning.
Meanwhile Mr O'Driscoll had been taken from the scene by gardaí as soon the emergency services began searching for his wife and daughter. It is understood that he and Fionn were last night being comforted by relatives and friends.
Mr O'Driscoll, who works as an electrical engineer on Whiddy Island, and his wife and family bought the old two-storey farmhouse at Milleens in the shadow of Cnoc Bui mountain only in February.
They moved in in May and had spent the summer restoring the property.
According to one neighbour, Mr O'Driscoll had recently raised the level of the concrete ford leading to the farm house and planned to build a new footbridge for pedestrians. One side of the stone rampart for the footbridge was clearly visible yesterday evening after the floodwaters receded.
Said the neighbour: "On a dry day the water is hardly flowing over the ford, but it can come down very quickly. Still, it's hard to believe something like this could happen. It's a terrible tragedy to think that Orla and Muire could be swept away like that."
Another neighbour commented; "That stream is something wicked the way it can come down. You can get huge volumes of water coming down and the water level shoots up in no time. It can rise two feet in just a few minutes and then it can fall just as quickly. It's just so sad that they were caught in it."
Last night Insp Pat Maher, who headed the search operation, described the death of Ms O'Driscoll and her daughter as "a terrible tragedy" for the family and said that people in the community would be doing their utmost in the coming days to try and help and comfort the bereaved.
Yesterday's tragedy is the second to involve people being caught in a flood while crossing a ford near Bantry.
Approximately four years ago a young couple returning home at Vaughan's Pass on the eastern side of the town also got caught in a flash flood on a ford, and the young woman died.