Weary firefighters and survivors covered in sooty grime. Rescuers bravely rushing into a blaze. building. Panic as people stumble and scamper from a stricken building. Many dead and injured people. Frantic friends and relatives rushing from hospital to hospital in desperate searches for missing loved ones. A numbed nation. And everybody remembers where they were the day it happened.
The dateline for this disaster is notManhattan, September 2001, but Dublin, February 1981, and the event was the inferno at the Stardust disco on the Kilmore Road.
While it was on nothing remotely like the scale of the US atrocity and didn't hacarry its global implications, the Stardust disaster had an enormous impact in Ireland. The Dublin city disaster plan was immediately activated and a raft of sporting, political and social events were cancelled.
St Valentine's Day
Some 841 people had attended the disco which began on the night of Friday 13th and ended so tragically in the early morning of St Valentine's Day. When it was all over, 48 youngsters were dead and hundreds were injured, many of them horribly scarred. The great majority of the 48 deaths and injuries were among the young people of Dublin's northside, especially Coolock.
Perhaps mindful of their own sorrow all those years ago when so many local people died, two days after the recent atrocity in the US, parishioners of St Luke's church in Kilmore West, Coolock, rallied to show their solidarity with the grieving people of the US.
Local schoolchildren leafleted all 1,500 houses in the parish to give notice of a Mass in memory of the bereaved for the Day of Remembrance on Friday 14th. As a mark of respect, some houses in Kilmore flew the Stars and Stripes beside the Tricolour.
After the three minutes' silence, at 11 a.m., the funeral bell sounded its sad tone and Mass commenced. The chapel overflowed and people congregated outside long after the Mass was over. (It is perhaps interesting to note that the only priest ordained in the entire diocese of Dublin this year is from St Luke's parish.)
Kilmore West is a corporation estate in Coolock, itself one of three huge schemes - along with Finglas and Ballymun - built on the then northmost reaches of Dublin city to receive the tens of thousands of families resettled in the inner-city clearances of 1968. This mass movement of population, while benevolent in intent, proved to be a mixed blessing.
For those of us who left behind the cramped corporation tenements and private-landlord flatlands, it was a dream come true to have a home of one's own and plenty of open spaces for the children to play.
Local landmarks
Apart from the church, however, the only notable local landmarks were the gargantuan fortified bunker, the Northside Shopping Centre, where some of the Stardust victims worked, and next door to it a huge barn of a pub, the Black Sheep, where many youngsters met and mingled that night before going to the disco.
The drawback of the move to the suburbs was social dislocation - separation from the old neighbourhood and friends five miles away in the middle of familiar and historic Dublin. In contrast Coolock at first seemed an alien and soulless place, a vast warren of long streets with identical houses; and neighbours were people you didn't know.
Families in the area were generally large by today's standards, which made for a very lively area. Gradually, through the ordinary, socially binding activities of family life, school, shopping, sport, church, births, marriages and deaths, a strong sense of community emerged.
It was this kind of place - 13 years after the estates were built - that was visited by the Stardust tragedy. The inferno at the disco on Kilmore Road left families bereaved in Kilmore and in other areas of Coolock, such as Bonnybrook, Darndale, Edenmore, Kilbarrack - and even as far afield the Twinbrook estate in Belfast.
Hushed tones
The morning after the fire, I watched the black and blue uniforms of police and priests - and nuns - gather outside certain homes, revealing who had been touched by the tragedy. Groups of people stood around talking in hushed tones. A terrible sense of loss hung over the area. St Luke's parish church overflowed and there were scenes of terrible anguish attended the funeral Masses. In the local college, Colβiste Dhulaigh, 15 desks remained empty until the end of term. The college choir sang at the funerals.
A new book, They Never Came Home, tells the story of the Stardust tragedy and its aftermath. While it is a heartrending and sensitive account, it is also a very disturbing one. A senior firefighter is quoted as saying: "The attitude of the managers and staff of Irish bars and nightclubs generally leaves a lot to be desired. We have no safety out there.
"The most relevant question today is: 'Could the Stardust happen again?' The answer is: 'Yes'."
They Never Came Home - The Stardust Story, by Neil Fetherstonhaugh and Tony McCullagh, is published by Merlin at £8.66.