A fire that claimed the lives of a father and his two daughters was started by a smouldering cigarette, the inquest into their deaths heard yesterday.
Mr Eddie Wall (39) and his daughters, Natasha who was 23 months and three-year-old Teresa, died in the fire which engulfed their terraced home in the Castle Ross estate in Dundalk in the early hours of November 10th last year.
Their mother, Michelle (23), the only survivor, had jumped from a top-floor window after her screams for help had alerted neighbours to the blaze.
The Coroner's Court heard about the efforts of gardaí, neighbours and friends to rescue the family.
In her deposition, Ms Michelle Wall detailed how on Saturday night, November 9th, her husband's 39th birthday, they had decided to go to a christening party in their neighbour's house.
They had smoked and had some drink in their sitting-room before the party.
The children had been put to bed by 9 p.m. in their bedrooms at the front of the house.
The babysitter did not arrive and the couple decided to go to the party next door but to call in and out to check the children.
She said that when they left the party at around 1 a.m., they had both been very drunk.
She had helped her husband up the stairs and put him lying on the bed fully clothed. She had gone into the bathroom and when she emerged she saw black smoke.
She kicked Mr Wall in an attempt to wake him, and then went to the small window in a front bedroom and screamed for help. She jumped out of the window and landed on top of two neighbours from the house on the other side.
Deputy State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy concluded that death had been caused by inhaling smoke and fire gases, adding that in the case of Mr Wall acute alcohol intoxication had been a contributory cause.
Evidence from Det Sgt Seamus Quinn, a Garda forensic expert, was that the fire started inside the couch in the front room where the couple had been sitting and smoking earlier in the night. A lit cigarette had smouldered for up to five hours before developing into flames.