A PRIMARY school principal has said the fact that nobody was killed when a truck crashed through the wall of the school yesterday as parents picked up children was “a miracle”.
A Scania truck crashed through the walls of Cregmore National School, Co Galway, and into a line of up to 11 cars belonging to parents and family who were collecting junior and senior infant children from the school just before 1.40pm.
Joe Kennelly said it was a miracle that nobody had died as a result of the crash.
“Never in my life have I seen anything like this. It was carnage, like a scene from Beirut and yes, it was that bad,” he said. “There were parents, grandparents, neighbours waiting to collect the young children and there must have been up to 25 cars in total parked there at the collection area.
“I saw it happening and ran out,” Mr Kennelly added. “I’ve been with the lifeboats for years, but I thought to myself, ‘if there are five to 10 fatalities here, we will be lucky’.
“The teachers had to count the children as we thought some of them might be caught under the cars or between them.”
Five people, including two children and a grandparent, were injured. All five were brought to University College Hospital in Galway city where their conditions were described as stable yesterday evening.
The incident occurred after a lorry and a car collided at Cregmore Cross. This caused the truck to jack-knife and crash through the wall of the school into a number of parked cars in the school’s pick-up area.
Many of the 70 pupils in the infant classes were lining up for collection by parents and witnessed the incident.
Local teenager Darren Duggan was sitting against the wall when he saw the truck coming towards him.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” he said. “I just pulled my feet up on to the wall and over the other side to get away.
“The truck came through the wall right beside me and then started to hit the cars.”
He said that one car in which a man and a baby were sitting was pushed 20 yards down the road by the force of the lorry.
Galway West Fianna Fáil TD Frank Fahey said it was “miraculous” that the crash had not ended in tragedy, adding that the road in question was particularly dangerous.
“It is used as a rat run by a lot of traffic to avoid Claregalway,” Mr Fahey said.
“There is no question but there’s a need to ban commercial traffic from the byroads and there is also a need to have speed traps, speed cameras and Garda checks on these smaller roads in order to slow down traffic.”