Heartbreak in Berkeley

'I only knew Nick for about a month and a half," says Gina Trombino. She is the bartender at the Sliderbar restaurant, where Nick Schuster worked as a kitchen porter for six weeks. The two grew close in that short time, socialising with workmates in Berkeley's bars outside their shifts.

Gina helped Nick with his summer list of San Francisco experiences and visits: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Ghirardelli chocolate factory, an Oakland As or San Francisco Giants baseball game, eating the best sourdough bread on a day trip to Half Moon Bay, and a trip to Pier 39 to watch the sea otters. In return, sports-mad Nick taught Gina the rules of Gaelic football.

“He was showing us that it is pretty much football mixed with soccer mixed with rugby, and how you could, like, throw it into the net or kick it over the bar,” she says. “I had never seen anything like it. We were actually talking about getting a bunch of his Irish friends and my American friends together at a field, so we could play a game.

“Nick was only 21,” she says, tears in her eyes. “He had his whole life ahead of him. I can only imagine how his family and his friends must be feeling right now.”

Niccolai – or Nick – Schuster was from Terenure in Dublin. He was one of the six fatalities in this week's tragedy in Berkeley, California. He had been studying history and politics at University College Dublin after graduating from St Mary's College in Rathmines.

Another victim, Eoghan Culligan from Rathfarnham in Dublin, was heading into his final year studying supply-chain management and logistics at Dublin Institute of Technology.

Eimear Walsh was a graduate of Loreto College Foxrock and a third-year medical student at UCD.

Lorcán Miller, from Shankill in Co Dublin, was a graduate of St Andrew’s College in Booterstown, Co Dublin. He was also studying medicine at UCD.

Olivia Burke, also a former student of Loreto in Foxrock, was months away from starting her fourth year at college, studying business entrepreneurship at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Her cousin, Ashley Donohoe – at 22 a year older than the other victims – was a dual Irish-American citizen who lived in Rohnert Park, about 60km north of San Francisco.

Although they lived an ocean and a continent apart, the cousins were close. They will share a funeral Mass today at a chapel about 75km north of San Francisco before Olivia’s parents bring her back to Ireland to be buried.

The five from Ireland were among an estimated 800 Irish students on J-1 summer visas in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer. Many of those 800 were roused from their sleep by phone calls in the small hours of Tuesday, as parents in Ireland tried frantically to contact their children, to see if they were safe.

That night on the US west coast – about noon in Ireland – news began to circulate of a dreadful accident at a student block in Berkeley. A fourth-floor balcony had collapsed on the Library Gardens student apartments at 2020 Kittredge Street in downtown Berkeley, and a number of students had plunged to their deaths.

“Everyone was woken up by their parents or other relatives on Tuesday, just to make sure that they were okay,” one Irish student said at the vigil held for the deceased students on Wednesday in Berkeley’s main public square, which was attended by several hundred people.

“It just hit me today that practically everyone here went through that experience. Parents at home – the relief they must had have. Unfortunately, other parents got different news.”

“‘Are you alive?’ It is such a horrible question to have to be asked,” said Nadia, another J-1 student from Dublin at the vigil. The 22-year-old received calls from her mother, father, brothers and aunts.

Library Gardens is a short walk from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Bart rail service into San Francisco.

In downtown San Francisco students work in the bars and restaurants of the city’s tourist hot spots in North Beach, which overlook the stunning bay, with views of the derelict prison island of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was Aoife Beary’s 21st birthday, and an estimated 40 people were in unit 405 of the apartment block. At about 12.41am, Warren Vercruysse, a Belgian whose apartment is on the first floor on the other side of the building from Kittredge Street, heard a loud bang, like gunfire or fireworks, and felt the building shake.

“We were asleep in our apartment that night, because we had work the next morning,” says Shaday Bates, from Kilbarrack in Dublin, on her first J-1 summer, who lives a three-minute walk away.

“It was about 12.30, and we just heard a really big noise. We assumed it was a bomb, because there was a lot going on in the area that night anyways – we heard a shooting first, and then there were lots of fireworks, so we didn’t know what to assume.”

On hearing the bang some students rushed out of the building to see bodies and rubble strewn under the remains of the destroyed balcony.

“It is a scene that was repeated when I closed my eyes that night, and it was repeated the next day when I opened them,” said one of the first emergency responders at the scene of the accident, just minutes later.

He didn’t want to give his name. He had seen many emergency scenes over his years working in Berkeley, he said, but “not as horrific as this”. “This is something that is embedded in my brain,” he said.

He worked his way from student to student, checking for vital signs and trying to rouse them, moving on to the next person if their situation was more grave.

Initial reports indicated that a number of Irish J-1 students were among the fatalities. As the day wore on, images of the debris and drinking cups on the footpath circulated around the world.

It emerged that four Irish students and a dual Irish-American citizen had lost their lives. By day’s end the death toll had risen to six; the seven injured, all Irish.

Four of the victims died at the scene. Two more students succumbed to their injuries in hospital.

The seven others who fell from the balcony were brought to three hospitals. As of yesterday two of the seven – Hannah Waters and Aoife Beary – were still in a critical condition.

The five other injured remain stable. Some underwent long surgeries after the accident. Two are said to have life-changing injuries.

The dead were among the best and brightest of Ireland’s youth, all but one of whom were born the year another group of Irish people travelled to the United States, to play in a World Cup that captivated a nation. This week that nation was left reeling in sorrow at one of the worst tragedies to befall young Irish visitors abroad.

All the families in Berkeley are today, with help from the Irish consular staff in San Francisco, making final plans for the return journey. The remains of all five returning to Ireland are expected to be repatriated this weekend, months before they were due to complete the summer of a lifetime in northern California.

Tales of heroism emerged from the horror. Darragh Cogley, brother of 21-year-old Clodagh, has said on his Facebook page that his sister was doing “really well” after sustaining serious injuries and that she wanted to thank her friend Jack Halpin for “grabbing her and breaking her fall”. Halpin was reported to have suffered serious back injuries and two broken legs after dropping the 12m to the pavement.

Fr Aidan McAleenan, a native of Co Down who is a based in nearby Oakland, said Jack and another of the injured, Conor Flynn, at the same hospital were doing well.

“The surgeons came down and talked to us,” he said. “They said they were young and vibrant and would be able to bounce back. Some of them might need more minor surgeries but nothing life-threatening.”

Some relatives were able to book flights immediately on Tuesday. Students who saw the balcony collapse from the apartment were able to call the relatives of the dead and injured quickly, enabling some to be in San Francisco, eight hours behind Ireland, by Tuesday evening.

The horror of those few minutes before emergency responders arrived, when the uninjured students at the party were left alone to tend to their friends, has not been lost on people here in Berkeley.

Speaking after laying a wreath at the memorial near the scene on Thursday evening, Minister for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan, shortly after arriving from Ireland on Thursday night, said that his thoughts were with those in the company of the dead that evening. "It is a traumatic time for them as well, and they need our support as well at this time," he said.

The memorial has been growing all week as family, friends and strangers have left flowers, personal mementos, notes or collages of photographs of bright and happy young faces of the dead. There are bouquets from Foxrock parish and St Mary’s in Rathmines.

“Thank you for your kindness,” reads one note, signed “the girl on the elevator”.

“I knew this day would come but yesterday I did not know it would be today – our prayers are with you,” read another message.

“Wish we could have gotten to know you over the summer,” said another from a group of guys in an apartment on the floor below.

A “Berkeley Irish-American Mom” left a pot of irises, a box of tissues and a note of warm support with “a hug for each of you”.

The Tricolours, Dublin GAA flag, St Andrew’s College crest, packets of Meanies crisps and box of Barry’s Tea made this a very Irish memorial.

Speaking to the media, both Irish and American, who have been reporting this story all week, Deenihan captured the sense of grief felt back in Ireland when the Dáil stood for a minute’s silence, flags were flown at half mast across the country and President Michael D Higgins described the “greatest sadness of the terrible loss of life”.

“I have never seen such an outpouring of genuine sympathy and grief from the whole country for the families of the bereaved. The six who are dead have become the children of Ireland,” said Deenihan.

This summer should have been another coming of age for the six Irish students, another step into adulthood. The J-1 programme has been a rite of passage for 150,000 Irish people over more than four decades.

For the 7,000 Irish students this summer, including 2,500 in California, it is an opportunity to experience American culture, to explore, to earn money, to have fun and to make new friends.

Ireland’s ties with this town date from its origins in 1878 – it named after the Co Kilkenny-born philosopher George Berkeley – right up to the present, with its Irish doctoral students at the university and the J-1ers.

Dave, a student from south Dublin, was a year behind Olivia Burke in Dún Laoghaire. He also knew Lorcán Miller “to say hello to and have a quick chat with”; they both went to St Andrew’s.

Dave had been talking to Olivia two weeks earlier. They met at Pappy’s, a bar on the lively Telegraph Avenue – a 15-minute walk from Library Gardens – that is popular with Irish students. “She was a bubbly girl, full of life,” he said. “We were having the craic, joking, just laughing about people in college, lecturers and stuff.”

Along with Pappy’s, another Berkeley bar that is popular among the J-1 students is Kip’s on Durant Avenue. As they pass each other on their way to work at Fisherman’s Wharf, “are you going to Pappy’s tonight?” is a regular line among Berkeley’s J-1ers

Nights out in Pappy’s are “almost like nights” at Copper Face Jacks, on Harcourt Street in Dublin. “The same type of vibes. Everyone is there. Just a bit more country people floating around,” said Dave.

Bruna, the woman tending the bar at Kip’s, says this is her “third Irish summer”. At the start of summer the university students finish up and the Irish arrive, she says. They tend to come in late, after midnight.

“We are happy that they’re here every summer,” said Bruna. “It is slow in summer, and they bring business. They like to sing soccer songs when they leave at closing. Yeah, we like them.”

There is a solidarity and natural bond among the Irish J-1ers in Berkeley. They don’t need to have known each other back in Ireland for them to grow close quickly here; their bond is that they are there for the summer for work and pleasure, after college exams.

First-time J-1ers gravitate towards second- or third-year veterans for advice on the best places to search for jobs or accommodation.

Dave and Jack met Nick Schuster one night a few weeks ago. They were sitting at a table, and Nick’s group came over. They all started chatting away as if they have been friends for years.

“We had no idea who they were until they sat down,” said Jack.

“I was having the craic with Nick about football. We were just taking the piss out of each other – he was from Mary’s and I was from Andrew’s – that type of stuff, just banter,” said Dave.

And, as Bruna said, soccer songs were part of the fun. Nick's group were singing the West Ham United supporters' anthem, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles. Dave, an Arsenal fan, wouldn't let it pass.

“I was like, ‘You must be West Ham fans?’ And they were like, ‘Nah, nah.’ You can’t be singing that song so,” he said.

But nightlife and camaraderie are not the only factors that draw Irish students to Berkeley. The weather is sunnier here than in San Francisco, and rents are lower.

In fact the building where this group of students were renting an apartment has become a focal point of reporting in the aftermath of the accident.

Berkeley’s mayor, Tom Bates, has said that the balcony collapse may be linked to water damage from inadequate waterproofing, although the investigation into the collapse is not yet complete, and he warned against jumping to conclusions about possible responses.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that Segue Construction, which built Library Gardens apartments, was involved in two lawsuits in recent years involving allegations of dry rot and substandard balconies in apartments in other parts of California.

Bates has said that, if shoddy workmanship turned out to be to blame for Tuesday’s tragedy, he would advise the Alameda County district attorney, Nancy O’Malley, to take a criminal prosecution.

“In general it is rare that incidents involving construction defects result in criminal prosecutions,” said Teresa Drenick, O’Malley’s deputy.

Elliott Smith, who works at the university, says, sardonically, that Berkeley has “the most expensive slums in the world”. Property is not a red-hot issue in Berkeley, he said; “it is a white-hot issue”.

Some developers have built quickly here, he says, because the value of property in the area is just so high.

He says he himself has moved from an out-of-state university to Berkeley, taking a pay cut of 3 per cent. His rent here is 35 per cent higher. In his old job he rented a $650-a-month two-bedroom house. In Berkeley he has a $1,000-a-month studio.

Others controversially hinted at another cause for the accident. On Wednesday the New York Times published an article linking Tuesday's accident to previous years' incidents of "drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments" by Irish students.

One of the veterans of the J-1 exchange programme, the former president Mary McAleese, worked in San Francisco on such a visa in 1971.

She noted the fact at the end of a letter to the New York Times on Wednesday excoriating the paper. McAleese said the New York Times "should be hanging its head in shame" for using a "lazy tabloid stereotype".

The paper apologised, but not before the article was heavily shared and read online, stirring up anger in Berkeley among students still struggling to cope with Tuesday’s tragedy.

First-time J-1 student Nadia, speaking at the following night’s vigil, said that a response posted on social media by the sister of one of the injured summed up her feelings on that story.

“She said it was disgusting. She was on the way to the airport with her mother, crying, and they felt more hurt reading that,” she said.

“The students did nothing wrong,” said Jack, a J-1er from south Dublin who visited Kittredge Street on Thursday to pay his respects at the memorial and to inspect the seven broken and rotted beams, which were exposed after builders removed the rest of the destroyed balcony.

“They were standing on a balcony at a party, which pretty much everyone has done, ever. We have all been at a party, standing on a balcony with people . . . It shouldn’t happen.”