Candles, cards and a ceramic angel left at Berkeley site

The memorial grew in size as last night wore on. Some mementos left at the scene clearly had a personal significance to the six Irish students killed at a party when the fourth-floor balcony collapsed early on Tuesday morning. Someone left a hubcab, for example.

There was a steady stream of mourners to pay tribute, most of them Irish J-1 students. They stood in groups, looking at the flowers and reading inscriptions on the cards, and then moved to the far corner to survey the damage that has left six Irish families distraught with grief and another seven fearful about the wellbeing of the injured, two of whom remain in a critical condition. The other five are stable, though two are said to have serious, life-changing injuries.

Another person had left Seamus Heaney's poem Postscript handwritten on a note of condolences nestled amongst the flowers. "You are neither here nor there, a hurry through which known and strange things pass," read one of the lines, above an inscription from the "Coghlans" from Mayo, Donegal, Dublin, Cork, Perth, Edinburgh and Richmond, California.

Among the other items left at the scene were a map of Ireland, mass cards, lit candles and a ceramic angel.

Someone else left a half drunk jar of beer, symbolic of the fun times that these Irish students were having when the seven beams that supported the balcony gave way sending 13 people plummeting 40 feet to the ground below.

Two Irish J-1 students, both university students back in Ireland, cycled down from another part of Berkeley to survey the scene of the accident last night.

One of them, Paul, a 21-year-old student from Tipperary, said that he had stayed in the student accommodation building at 2020 Kittredge Street for one night but decided to pick somewhere else to live for the summer because it was too expensive.

“It was lovely, very nice,” he said.

He and his friend, Michael, a 21-year old student from Waterford, said that they were both awoken by 4am phone calls from concerned parents who had heard about the accident on the news.

“They were just relieved when I answered the phone,” said Paul.

Berkeley is popular with Irish J-1 students, hundreds of whom choose California, because the rents are lower than in San Francisco and the weather is warmer and sunnier.

“It won’t be the same for all of us after this,” said Paul. “The atmosphere won’t be the same.”

Irish J-1 students, usually ebullient on a summer of a lifetime, filed quietly up to the memorial last night and stood in silence, some hugging each other for comfort.

The scene was in stark contrast to the jubilant chaos seen in other parts of Berkeley where sports fans spilled out of bars to dance in the streets and cheer the victory of the Golden State Warriors in the National Basketball Association Championships last night.

Three students, including a number from Dublin, standing near the memorial were visibly shaken by the day’s events. Their eyes were red from crying, their shoulders haunched. They didn’t want to talk to reporters.

Late yesterday, a contractor removed the remains of the broken balcony that had fallen at around 12.41am sending Olivia Burke, Eimear Walsh, Eoghan Culligan, Niccolai Schuster, Lorcán Miller and Ashley Donohoe to their deaths. All but Ashley were 21. She was 22.

Once the debris was removed it was clear to see that some of the seven beams that once held the balcony up had rotted. Crime scene investigators had already surveyed the scene by the time outside contractors had been called in last night to clean up the street.

Berkeley Police Department Sergeant Mary Kusmiss said her officers had collected some personal belongings, including mobile phones and jewellery, that had been left behind after the accident.

Police officers described the carnage that they came across at the scene within minutes of the accident. Police headquarters is just a short walk away from the student accommodation building that houses students from the University of California, Berkeley during the academic year and dozens of Irish J-1 students during the summers.

“We have never had an incident of this magnitude. We have had young people over the years fall off balconies and from fire escapes but nothing over the past 20 years this catastrophic,” said Ms Kusmiss.

"It was terrible. It was very painful. They had a lot of kids there, many of them in pain, some of them killed," Berkeley's chief of police Mike Meehan told The Irish Times.

“They have other kids there who were trying to help those kids so our officers were there within about two minutes of the first call and their goal at that point is first aid and to get treatment and get everybody on the ambulance as fast as possible hopefully to save as many lives as possible.”

Police investigators are working with the city’s fire department and building safety departure to find out what happened, Mr Meehan said.

Investigators will examine whether the balcony was built properly, whether it was overloaded and whether it had been weakened by rain.

The remains of the balcony have been removed from the scene and put in safe-keeping in the city. Police are attempting to speak to each of the estimated 40 to 50 students who were in the apartment at the time.

Asked for comment on suggestions from experts, based on photographic evidence, that the balcony had not been adequately waterproofed, Mr Meehan said it was too soon to speculate on the cause of the tragedy.

“We are not going to exclude any possibilities because we are not going to miss something,” he said.

“That would be one possibility that we are looking at but again it really requires structural engineers to look at things in detail to get a good sense of the structural integrity of the building.”

On the street below, a section of the tree below the balcony had been stripped of some of its bark. Parts of the top of the metal grate surrounding the tree had been bent back - evidence of the tragedy that had unfolded early on Tuesday morning.

“Nobody can remember anything in decades that has happened like this, to this extent,” said Mr Meehan.

The investigation will not leave any stone unturned, he said.

“We want this to be incredibly thorough and make sure that everybody has a very clear understanding of what occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred and hopefully prevent something like this from ever happening again,” he added.

After laying a wreath at the scene with Berkeley's mayor Tom Bates, Philip Grant, Ireland's Consul General to the Western United States based in San Francisco, praised the emergency services: the police, the fire department and the three hospitals that had taken the seven injured from the scene.

“There is so much sympathy here at a time when you know when everyone’s heart is breaking here,” he said.

“You have seen the apartments. These have been used by Irish students for years. Berkeley has always been a place they have loved to come. It is a student town. It is full of so many happy memories. So that it happened here is so hard. It is so, so, so hard.”

The young Irish friends of the deceased and injured were shaken but supporting each other as best they could before their families started arriving into San Francisco on the first flights from Dublin last night, said Mr Grant.

“They are going through enormous trauma. Nobody has had sleep here since the accident happened,” he said.

“They are rallying around each other. The tough days are in some respects are still to come because the families are going to be here.”