Berkeley: President speaks of ‘enormous tragedy’ as parents prepare to bring bodies home

President Michael D Higgins has spoken of the enormity of loss and grief at the deaths of six Irish students after a fourth-floor collapsed balcony at a 21st birthday party in Berkeley, California.

Speaking at the opening of a book of condolence in the Mansion House, Dublin, Mr Higgins said: “I think the fact that so many young people were lost in such a terrible accident has deeply affected people. Many, in their comments, were almost unable to speak in the enormity of the tragedy,” Mr Higgins said.

In San Francisco medical staff are closely monitoring two Irish women still in a critical condition after they fell from the collapsed balcony.

Hannah Waters and Aoife Beary, both from Dublin, are expected to remain critical over the coming days as they are treated at Highland Hospital in nearby Oakland.

The students were celebrating Ms Beary’s birthday at an apartment on Tuesday when the accident occurred, killing six students and injuring seven.

Several hundred people, mostly Irish J-1 students in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended a night vigil on Wednesday in Berkeley for the victims.

The vigil was organised by some of the people who attended the birthday party at the Liberty Gardens student accommodation building in downtown Berkeley near the University of California, Berkeley.

Sniffles and coughs interrupted the solemn silence of the event in Martin Luther King Jr Civic Centre Park, the main park in Berkeley.

Family members

Family members of five of the six deceased want to bring their bodies back to Ireland by Monday at the latest but earlier if arrangements can be made, said an Irish priest in nearby Oakland.

Relatives who had travelled over from Ireland on Tuesday and Wednesday would be able to see the remains of their loved ones today after they are moved from the coroner’s mortuary, said Fr Aidan McAleenan.

Fr McAleen was speaking after a memorial mass held at Christ The Light Cathedral in Oakland attended by about 300 people.

He said the relatives of Olivia Burke (21), Eoghan Culligan (21), Niccolai Schuster (21), Lorcan Miller (21) and Eimear Walsh (21), all from Ireland, hoped to bring them home before an Aer Lingus flight scheduled for them on Sunday.

Arrangements are meanwhile being made for the funeral service of Ashley Donohoe, who is from Rohnert Park, a town north of San Francisco, on Saturday. Her parents emigrated from Ireland in 1989.

The parents of Olivia Burke, a cousin of Ms Donohoe, flew in on Tuesday evening. The remaining parents arrived on the direct flight from Dublin yesterday.

Injured students

The names of the other injured students were confirmed as Clodagh Cogley, Niall Murray, Seán Fahey, Jack Halpin and Conor Flynn. They were in a stable condition yesterday. Two are said to have been injured seriously and underwent extensive surgery on Tuesday.

Fr McAleenan said that he had visited John Nuir Hospital in Walnut Creek, about 16 miles east of Berkeley in California, where Conor Flynn and Jack Halpin were being treated.

“One of them had a broken leg and was out surgery yesterday and was doing fine, and the other had a punctured lung but nothing life-threatening,” said the priest, a native of Banbridge, Co Down.

He said that a group of their friends had stayed with them, sleeping on hospital floor since the accident took place on Tuesday morning.

The investigation into the accident is being led by the building safety department at the City of Berkeley.

Berkeley mayor Tom Bates said the balcony collapse primarily was caused by water-damaged wood. Mr Bates said initial findings by investigators suggested the wood was not properly caulked and sealed when the building was being constructed.

It is believed the supports were damaged by moisture as a result. “More than likely, it was caused by rain and water damage that was caused to the support beams,” the mayor said.

New York Times

Responding to public anger over an article on the tragedy, the New York Times apologised for a report saying that some of the language “could be interpreted as insensitive” to the victims’ families.

The newspaper tied the accident to previous “high-profile episodes” involving J-1 visa students in “drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments” in California, saying that the programme had become “a source of embarrassment for Ireland.”

Former president Mary McAleese wrote a letter of complaint to the New York Times, saying that it “should be hanging its head in shame at how outrageously and without the remotest evidence it has rushed to judgment on those deaths.”

“A spokeswoman for the newspaper said: “It was never our intention to blame the victims and we apologise if the piece left that impression.”