‘You felt like your eyeballs were melting – it was that hot’ - Stardust survivor

A survivor of the Stardust fire has described tending to a young man outside the nightclub who was “on fire” and calling out for his brother who died in the blaze.

Ann Horner, aged 21 at the time of the disaster, was one of five young women from Derry who had moved to Dublin to work in Nazareth House, a care home on the Malahide Road. They went to the Stardust together. One of the friends, Susan Morgan (19) from the Carnhill area of Derry City, perished in the fire.

Ms Horner was one of seven witnesses who gave evidence at Dublin coroner’s court on Thursday – day 77 of fresh inquests into the deaths of 48 people aged 16-27 in a fire in the Stardust nightclub, in north Dublin in the early hours of February 14th, 1981.

She told the court she had gone to leave the club at about 1am as she had promised to help Ms Morgan with the breakfast shift the following morning.

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She was unable to however as the main exit was locked. A doorman who said he would be “with [her] in five minutes” took too long, so she went back to rejoin her friends on the dance floor. She noticed the fire “like a wee lamp glowing” in the distance.

“Within seconds it seemed to just flash over the ceiling and there was droplets... it was raining flames and I remember there was ashtrays on the tables, they were just igniting on the tables. Everyone started panicking then and it was just a scramble... everyone was scrambling for the exits.”

A friend named Christine fell on her as she too fell. “I remember shouting ‘Christine’ and it was... the smoke... it was burning your nostrils, your throat, your chest. My eyes were burning. Even when you closed your eyes, you felt like your eyeballs were melting – it was that hot.

She escaped through exit 4 or 5 at the side of the ballroom as friends had “kicked” her out.

She got to a grassy area in front of the ballroom and saw a young man coming towards her “on fire”.

“I remember helping him and he had an ingot around his neck with ‘Larry’ on it. And I kept asking him, trying to calm him down, ‘What’s your name?’ He was in a bad way and he kept shouting for another name.”

She later learned this young man was Larry Stout, who had been at the Stardust with his brother John (18), who was one of the 48 who died and had been there with his girlfriend Helena Mangan (22) who also died. The name he had been calling “must have been” John’s, said the witness.

She also described having seen chains and a padlock “snaked” around an exit’s push-bars sometime between 11.15pm and 1am and joking to a friend: “They’ve locked us in.”

Her sister Finola Horner, aged 18 at the time, also worked in Nazareth House. She told the court she had been dancing with Tony Wade, whose brother Paul (17) perished. The DJ asked people to go to the nearest exit.

“We fell... people were clambering on top of you. Everybody just started to panic and run. It was pitch black... the smell and the heat and stuff coming from the ceiling – you couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t get up... You couldn’t get up because of people stomping over you.”

Yvonne Blackwell, aged 18 at the time, from Derry and also working in Nazareth House, was Susan Morgan’s roommate. She did not remember how she got out of the inferno, but described waking up face down outside exit 5.

She couldn’t get up because there was “something like a bin” on her back.

“There was a fellah lying beside me who was badly burnt on his face and hands, his coat and shirt were stuck to him and he was shouting, ‘Help me. Help me.’ I couldn’t help him because I couldn’t get up.

“There was five of us came down from Derry but only four of us went home because Susie was burned in the fire,” she said.

The inquests continue.