Stardust survivor who witnessed girl ‘on fire’ says families need counselling

A survivor of the Stardust fire has thought of a girl he saw “on fire” just inside an exit, whom he could not reach, “every day” of the last 42 years.

Benny Murphy, who was aged 18 at the time of the disaster, told Dublin District Coroner’s Court on Thursday there should be “some sort of counselling” for those who lived through the tragedy and were bereaved by it.

He described what he saw after he escaped the blaze, just inside the exit he had come out through, as “a horrible, horrible thing” that he thought about every day. He “saw a girl on fire... No one could do anything for her as the exit was on fire.”

Speaking at the close of his evidence, he reminded the court he was 18 when he experienced the Stardust disaster.

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“Every day I have to wake up and I have the memories of this girl that was in the fire exit. I don’t know if she’s still alive. Her clothes were burnt off. Her stomach was breathing up and down. It was a horrible, horrible thing.

“The experience not only for me but for the families, for the people who survived there should be some sort of counselling or something. It affects you in many ways and affects people in different ways. There’s no taking away the fact that 48 people lost their lives.

“No matter what the evidence is it’s going to affect people, the families, everybody else that has suffered through this. Myself as I’ve said, I have had to face every day for 42 years of looking back in through Exit 4 and seeing this girl burning and she was close and you can’t get her.”

Responding, coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said: “These are very difficult memories but the process we are engaged in here, with which you have very much helped today, we hope does some bring some relief to those bereaved families in some way.”

Mr Murphy was one of four survivors giving evidence on Thursday at fresh inquests into the deaths of 48 people, aged 16 to 27, in the Stardust nightclub inferno in Artane in the early hours of February 14th, 1981.

He earlier described “pandemonium” at the exit as he brought a friend overcome by smoke to safety. Once outside “you could see smoke coming off people’s clothes”. At the front of the building he heard people screaming inside toilets, the windows of which were sealed shut with metal plates and bars. He saw Dublin Fire Brigade attached steel ropes, from their appliance to the bars, to try to remove them. The fire appliance just “jerked” and could not budge them, said Mr Murphy.

Michael Rock, aged 18 at the time, described falling at the same Exit 4 and passing out, before coming around when someone vomited on his hand. He crawled towards light outside after the lights went out and the ballroom filled with smoke.

Sandra Hyland, 15 at the time, described getting out safely initially and going back in to look for friends before being “carried” out by a “sea of people” coming towards her.

She described having seen a “normal, small” fire “in the centre of the seats” after a bouncer raised a blind at the front of a sectioned-off area.

The fire “seemed to travel vertically up. It shot up and ... spread out across the ceiling, like in waves across the ceiling. Then I began to panic and I thought, I was kind of running back and forth, thinking, ‘Where’s Sandra and Linda [her friends]?’ I couldn’t see them ... I just panicked and ran out the door, through the main entrance.” She thought about running home but ran back to look for her friends and got in as far as the ballroom.

“People were panicking at that stage and I could hear someone shouting, ‘They’re locked’ and then a sea of people just came towards me and carried me. I was carried out with the people and I couldn’t get back in.”

It was when she “heard people banging and screaming from inside” that she realised how serious the unfolding situation was.

The inquests continue on Friday.