Hundreds attend Berkeley vigil for those killed and injured

Several hundred people, most Irish J-1 students in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended a night vigil to the six Irish people killed when a balcony collapsed at a party in Berkeley, California on Tuesday.

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.

The students lit candles and nightlights and placed them before a bench filled with flowers and two photographs of one of the six victims, Niccolai Schuster (21), a student from Terenure, south Dublin.

A card with the crest of St Andrew's College in Booterstown, Dublin and the name of one of its former students, Lorcan Miller (21), another victim of Tuesday's accident.

Mr Miller was a student of medicine at University College Dublin.

Students rubbed tears from their eyes and friends embraced as the crowd, estimated at more than 600 people, remembered the six Irish students, close friends to some and fellow J-1 students to others.

A number of family members of the dead and seven injured attended the vigil after flying in from Dublin on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“It was really good all the Irish coming together as a community over here, said one Dublin student who didn’t want to give his name.

“Everybody came here with the same expectations, just for a great summer and then for it to be cut short is just awful.”

Philip Grant, the Irish Consul General based in San Francisco, estimated that 80 per cent of about 800 Irish J-1 students spending this summer in the San Francisco Bay Area attended the vigil.

He described the event as “very prayerful, very silent and an act of solidarity” among the Irish J-1 community in the region.

“This was something spontaneous. It started last night just the group who were at the party and their close friends,” he said.

“They basically wanted somewhere public where they could gather and share their thoughts and swap news. Tonight they wanted to make it a bit bigger because the families arrived today.”

That family members of the dead and injured attended made the event “very special,” he said.

Mr Grant said that a number of American students who worked with the Irish J-1ers also attended the vigil in an act of solidarity.

He paid tribute to the Irish students who turned out in such large numbers, describing it as a “beautiful way to pay tribute.”

“I can only pay tribute to them because since this dreadful incident on early Tuesday morning,” he said.

“It is through their support that the families and even ourselves are getting through the enormity of this and you know the journey we sill have to travel in terms of bringing the bodies home to Ireland.”

Irish family members who arrived in Berkeley on Tuesday and Wednesday have been unable to see the remains of their children because the Alameda County coroner does not have facilities to do so.

The families must wait until the remains are passed to undertakers, which is expected to happen later on Thursday.

Fr Aidan McAleenan, a native of Banbridge, Co Down and a priest at St Columba Catholic Church in nearby Oakland, spoke on behalf of the families about the frustration this brought at a memorial mass held for the victims before the vigil.

“At the end of the day what they want to see most is they want to see their loves ones,” he said during a homily at the mass held two hours before the vigil at the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland.

Mr Grant said it would take time to know the extent of the injuries to two critically injured students among seven injured in Tuesday’s accident who are still being treated at three hospitals in the Bay Area.

“The nature of the injuries means that it is going to take a period of time to assess the injuries, but they are all fighters,” he said.

The Irish diplomat said that he was surprised at the scale of the turnout at last night’s vigil.

“It brought a tear to my eye when I came here. I am sure it did the same to yours,” he said.

“It shows the debt of hurt and pain and concern and grief.”