‘I placed my hand on the window. I felt the condensation. It felt like glass. I punched it but it was a sheet of steel’

One of the 48 people who died as a result of the 1981 Stardust fire expressed confidence while in a hospital intensive care unit about recovering and having “a couple of pints”, a survivor of the disaster has said.

Jimmy Fitzpatrick, who 16 at the time, told Dublin Coroner’s Court on Friday that he spent 16 weeks in hospital with third-degree burn injuries to his head, neck, shoulders, arms and hands.

He had been at the north Dublin nightclub with workmates from Superquinn in the Northside shopping centre, including Liam Dunne (18), an apprentice butcher who died in the incident.

Mr Fitzpatrick was one of six witnesses, all patrons on the night, who gave evidence on day 78 of fresh inquests into the deaths of 48 people aged 16 to 27 in the fire in an early hours of February 14th, 1981.

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When making his escape on the night, he said he had almost reached the main exit but had passed two girls holding each other and “screaming” just before the foyer.

“They were panicking but going nowhere,” he said. He pushed his way back to them and “threw” them into the foyer where they were carried forward.

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

He went to follow them but fell. “I was being trampled so I crawled as fast as a I could.” He crawled across carpet and when he felt wooden boards realised he was at the dance floor – away from the main exit.

“I could see nothing. The lights had gone and the smoke...you could chew the smoke,” he said.

He could breathe at floor level, took a gulp of air and got up to run, falling again.

He saw “balls of flame...dropping everywhere across the whole dance floor” and felt debris falling on him and burning. He got another gulp of air, felt someone ran past, and got up and ran the same direction.

“I heard loads of screaming and kicking and I just started kicking with them and then the door burst open”.

A young man brought him to an ambulance, which was full in the back.

“The driver said, ‘We’re full’ and he threw me in the front and says, ‘Now you’re f***ing full’ and slammed the front door,” said the witness. He was in intensive care in the Mater hospital in bed next to Mr Dunne, who told him his hands were “all burnt”.

“I remember Liam speaking to me. I couldn’t speak back because I had the respirator. Liam got up on the bed and looked over.”

I pushed two taps on and threw water over people, telling them to breathe through their clothes and just kept banging on the steel

—  Peter O'Shaughnessy

Becoming upset, he continued: “And he said to me, ‘Jimmy, we made it this far buddy. We’ll get out and we’ll have a couple of pints after this’.”

Mr Dunne died in the Mater hospital on March 11th, 1981.

Asked whether falling twice had saved his life, Mr Fitzpatrick said: “Absolutely...The fact that I was on the floor and was able to take a breath of air did assist in me staying alive. That and my fitness levels.”

Peter O’Shaughnessy, 17 at the time, described being rescued from the ladies’ toilets by a fireman from Dublin Fire Brigade. The lights had gone out when he helped a girl who had fallen, just by the entrance to the toilets. He, the girl and another girl ended up in the ladies’ bathroom.

“We worked our way down [the wall] until we got to a wash-hand basin near a window. I placed my hand on the window. I felt the condensation. It felt like glass. I punched it but it was a sheet of steel.”

The inquests have heard the toilet windows were sealed shut with metal bars and sheets by Stardust management some weeks before the disaster.

“So the three of us huddled into the corner,” said Mr O’Shaughnessy. “I pushed two taps on and threw water over people, telling them to breathe through their clothes and just kept banging on the steel.”

Becoming upset, he continued: “People outside were shouting into us that they were trying to get us out. And I just kept banging on that steel...We were choking. We were out of the flames...We were fairly safe...but the room was still filling with smoke so we were breathing through our clothes.”

He told Grainne Larkin, BL for Dublin Fire Brigade, a firemen came in and offered them oxygen from his own breathing apparatus, first to the girls and then to him. He then took one of the girls out in his arms to another fireman at the door.

[ Timeline: The Stardust disaster - a decades-long campaign for truth ]

“He came back in and took up the other girl in his arms and he said to me, ‘Hold on to me belt and keep your head down. It’s hot out here...I felt the heat scorch me. I realised I was actually walking through the flames.”

The fireman tried to guide him through a hatch into the cloakroom, which was next to the ladies’ and off the main foyer. “I missed the hatch because I had my eyes closed and ended up lying on my back...I thought I was dead then because I thought he’d gone. But he hadn’t. He picked me up and threw me through the hatch and then I came up some stairs somewhere and there was a fireman at the top at another window about a metre high.”

He helped shunt him up to the window “and down a ladder connected to a fire engine, and I came down.”

The inquests continue.