Buncrana in shock after another fatal collision

Buncrana was in shock again at the weekend, as townspeople awoke to another Saturday morning and news of another multiple fatal car crash.

"God, it never stops . . . are you a Lithuanian?" a woman on her way into St Mary's oratory asked a Polish men standing with friends outside the door. "Why is it Buncrana again?" she asked as she moved on into the church.

Inside the oratory, Fr Con McLaughlin was preparing for a wedding among the Lithuanian community.

He remarked nervously that some of the dead might have been coming to the Co Donegal town for the wedding. Should he say something to the wedding party "or not tell them things they shouldn't have to hear"?

None of those directly involved in the tragedy was due at the wedding, as it happens, and were unknown to the wedding party, which says much about the number of Lithuanians and other eastern Europeans in Inishowen.

As many as 200, according to some locals, are spread around a number of small employers such as shops and petrol stations, and are well liked.

At Mass yesterday morning, Fr Eddie McGuinness told the congregation they were right to ask what was going on in Inishowen. He encouraged them to support the young people and pray for them, particularly for the young eastern Europeans who had died "a thousand miles from home".

He also asked his congregation to pray for "a reduction in the carnage on our roads".

Outside the church two men confronted by a posse of reporters acknowledged they were Latvian, but communication was not good enough for even the most determined reporter to get enough that could be described as an interview.

In the Gateway hotel, RTÉ had arrived to record a Morning Ireland programme on road safety due to be aired this morning. Fr McLaughlin arrived with Snezana and Nicoli Goldobina who were working in Buncrana, she for 11 months and he for a little longer.

Snezana told of her friendship with the women who had died and how Ginta Veite, the 18-year- old who lost her life within hours of arriving in Ireland, had been planning to spend her summer holidays here with her mother, Aija Porcika.

Aija had been studying at university at home and would have returned there in three months.

Marita Kerpe, another of the women who were killed, had worked part time in a filling station in the town. She had two children back in Latvia and even the reporters were quiet as the implications of this sank in.

Last night as the Lithuanian and Latvian consular authorities awaited the release of the bodies from hospital things were returning to normal in Buncrana - until the next time. Or until someone answers the question: why Buncrana?