Original subtitles

(Clock ticking)

RADIO: Good morning. It's 07:00 on Thursday the 18 April.

And on this morning's programme more than

40 years later, the coroner's court gives its verdict today on the Stardust fire.

The jury has no now reached majority verdicts, and they'll be read out at 02:00 today.

Are we getting in now?

Just get my jacket on, and then we're ready to roll.

It's 43 years this year.

Now you all ready?

The long wait.

Please God, we get justice for our children.

Yeah.

And what more can I say than that?

Everybody was buzzing to be going to

the Stardust on Valentine's night at a disco competition.

Great spot, very entertaining.

Was the place to go on the Northside.

Everybody kind of knew each other,

there was a great camaraderie of the place, you know.

I noticed smoke just drifting across the ceiling.

The DJ announced 'there's a small fire on the premises'.

You know, 'don't panic'.

It's like a door was open and the fire just went.

I was in Tara Street fire station.

The phone rang.

'I'm in the Stardust',

he said, 'premises is on fire.'

He said, 'take this very, very, very seriously.'

It was like Dante's Inferno.

REPORTER: The church was full.

But in the 1 square mile around Artane and Coolock,

this agonising procession was repeated 17 times today.

The focus shifted.

Why did this happen?

The interviews with witnesses pointed to the doors being locked.

They were trapped.

Windows were barred.

Council is clear in so far,

that I've done everything possible

from the day that place opened to make it as safe as possible.

The judge said it was probably arson, and exonerated the Butterlys

and Dublin Corporation and the state of any real responsibility for what happened.

Our children were criminalised as arsonists.

It made people think then 'who did this?'

Relatives are holding a vigilant has been.

As a result of families picketing, standing out in the cold.

Some of them have sadly passed away.

Then achieved a fresh inquest after the decades of campaigning.

The Stardust families were treated like dirt,

and there's no other way to put it.

They wanted us to just go away and forget about it.

But we didn't go away to forget about it.

It's for some official real day that the inquest is actually starting.

So it's a big, big day for us families.

And we hope at the end of this inquest,

that we get to know what really happened on that night.

Valentine's morning.

It heralds the beginning of finding justice.

(Siren wails)

I Love You You More Than I Can Say - Leo Sayer

I love you more than I can say

With the killing of three more UDR men,

the total number of people killed in the North, has risen to 2,001.

Ireland was a troubled state in 1981.

First of all, you had the Troubles.

This attack is the latest in a series

on prominent republicans and H Block campaigners.

The signs of emigration were everywhere.

There was lots of emigration for many people.

The latest emigration figures raised

fears of a return to the bleak decade of the fifties.

Huge unemployment, a deep recession.

Dank, dirty.

Those who had jobs were very lucky to have them,

but they were being taxed to up to 65%.

Listen, Charlie...the divil you know is better than the divil you don't know!

The Taoiseach got the time was Charles Haughey.

Am I just another guy? (Cheering)

Stardust was in his constituency of Dublin, North Central.

I miss you more than I can

Charlie he always led the poll.

He had a way of looking after people, and therefore they voted for him.

Oh, oh, I love you more than I can say

Coolock, Artane and Darndale, were big working class areas.

Some of the people who were living there had moved out from the centre of Dublin.

This constituency is, in the main, a working class constituency.

A lot of people had more, more than four, five, six in their family.

They were all quite big families.

We had road leagues and community projects.

We put buntings out when Dublin was playing, when the pope was coming.

People minded people.

It was a great area to grow up in.

Every neighbour would know, every child on their road, kind of thing, growing up.

It had 90,000 people at that time,

it was a well established residential area with some industrial areas as well.

When I got married,

we lived in town for a while, and then we got a house in Edenmore.

After being living in the city, it was completely a different world.

I loved Edenmore.

And my neighbours...they were brilliant neighbours.

So mother was delighted, she was thrilled to have her own home,

you know, and her back garden and front garden.

There was eight kids from the family.

I was the youngest.

We didn't have much, you know, and, like,

very few people had a car and there's no phones and that type of thing.

But as regards to, like, if anybody was short of anything, you always helped out.

Doo-doo-doo, da-da-da, is all I want to say to you.

There was twelve in the family, including my mum and dad.

We all grew up in Donnycarney.

Two bedroom house, ten children.

Absolute mayhem.

My dad died when I was 14.

My ma, she actually moved down to the country, then down to Offaly.

My brother Jimmy, when he got married,

he stayed in the house with us because he wanted to look after me.

I was still going to school and the rest were all just working and that, you know,

He had a little band going in the house, so the house was busy, busy all the time, like you know.

Tell me why...I don't like Mondays

Tell me why...I don't like Mondays

I was 13 when my brother Brian was born.

He was a surprise baby, my mother was 44.

And I remembers he brought him home from hospital and she handed him to me.

What will we call him?

And I don't know where it came from, I said, 'how about Brian?'

She goes, 'yep.' So that was it, he was Brian.

He was funny.

Chatterer, good looking.

Fancied himself no end growing up, like, really no end,

he thought he was the bee's knees!

Caroline was very outgoing, our only child.

She was nice looking girl, and her hair was lovely.

She had beautiful hair, beautiful hair.

And she really had.

She had plenty of friends.

They would go to local dance halls

and then they'd meet up and they'd come to our house and our friends would come in

and we had a record player there.

And we actually built an extra room on our house, for her to have her friends in.

Ain't no stoppin' us now

What I remember of Willie,

he was a big lad, almost like my father was a very big man.

I think he was 6' 7".

Yeah, he was huge.

Big fireman, you know.

Willie loved going out the weekend,

which they all did, I suppose, back then, you know.

My mother idolised him, absolutely...she idolised him!

George was what my mother would always say

'a bloody rascal', you know, and always getting into trouble with my father.

And my mother would always stick up for him

or hide him in the coal shed or in the alleyo, you know, so funny.

He was always up to something.

Marcella, she had a fabulous group of friends, so they used to always meet up in town

in the Dandelion Market, and they'd buy all their records and,

The Specials, she was into, and The Beat.

Mirror in the bathroom, please talk free,

The door is locked, just you and me.

We got a house in Coolock. That was in 1964.

So there was five girls and three boys,

and my dad worked in Cadburys.

My mother worked in Cadburys for a short while as well,

til she started having all the babies.

Mary, she was the eldest in the family.

If we got stuck on our homework, she'd always help us.

Martina, I don't think there was one fella in Coolock that didn't fancy her,

she was absolutely gorgeous.

The Stardust.

Originally, it was a jam factory in the seventies,

and at one stage Patrick Butterly, who was the owner,

decided that he wanted to convert it into Ireland's largest entertainment complex.

And he set about doing that.

And there were various setbacks over the years,

Dublin Corporation, refusing planning permission.

So it was a long battle.

He didn't give up.

Any time he came up against the brick wall, he appealed,

and eventually he got it over the line.

Patrick Butterly and the Butterly family, were from Rush in North County Dublin

and he was involved in market gardening

and that's where he made his money.

And in fact, it's something he was very proud of.

Eamon Butterly was one of Patrick Butterly's sons.

The entertainment element of the business,

was managed primarily by Eamon Butterly.

Eventually the Stardust opened in March 1978, with a gala concert.

There were three main elements to the building.

There was a pub called Silver Swan,

the Lantern Room, which was like a restaurant/ cabaret lounge, and then the main venue itself,

which was the Stardust, but as an entertainment complex,

the Butterly's would boast at the time that it was the largest

and most sophisticated of its, of its kind in Ireland.

I'm never frightened or worried

You know I always get high

I heat up. I heat up

I cool down. I cool down

Don't let life get me down

Lots of big acts played in the Stardust.

So myself and my friend decided to go down and ask could we get a job.

They said 'yeah'.

And we started to work there.

Pearls a singer.

We were lounge girls. We would serve the drinks to the tables, clear the glasses.

We would wear a white blouse, black skirt.

We were supposed to sometimes but yeah...that was our uniform.

Stardust was a great place.

Everyone headed there. It was a good spot,

great spot, very entertaining. It was the place to go on the Northside.

In a nightclub

Upside down...boy you turn me,

Inside out, and round and round.

We'd been to the Stardust like many a time.

But this particular night there's a disco competition on and

it was Friday the 13th.

Call me

There was a big build up to it like,

for weeks we were all ringing one another and were saying like, you know 'what are you wearing?'

It was a K-Tel disco competition,

and I think there was a prize of 25 pound, right was the prize money.

It was a big deal.

And myself, my brother John and my sisters Mary and Martina, were all planning to go.

D.I.S.C.O.

Phyllis was invited to a wedding in Manchester.

Caroline was invited to wedding but she didn't want to go to wedding,

'I don't want to go to a stupid wedding,

'I want to stay my friends and go to the dance in the Stardust.'

Her friend Anne Marie's mother said, 'look, you're only away for two nights,

'I'll look after Caroline when you're away.'

So we said okay, so we agreed to that.

I'm coming out, I want the world to know,

Got to let it show.

I was an apprentice butcher in Superquinn, Northside and I was 16.

We'd a late night in the butchers.

Everybody as planning on the night and when to go.

So get ready from work, get over to the house, get a quick wash,

get changed and then we meet the guys down on the Artane Road just on the way.

The winner takes it all

The loser standing small

There was competitions on every week.

If you qualified, you went into the final for the Stardust,

you know, it was fun, it wasn't nothing serious.

You weren't going to be a professional dancer,

if you wanted to carry it on, you could carry it on, you know.

When I got into the finals, my brother Jimmy was delighted for me.

You should have stayed at home yesterday.

I wasn't allowed go, I was actually babysitting two kids

and I gave my sister the money,

and asked her (laughs) would she mind them

just last minute decision 10:00, 'ah look, I'll go down.'

I wasn't dressed up like an adult.

I went in, trousers and an anorak, but I got in.

All the dancers had to go up early,

so we had to go up early from the house.

Yeah, you're wearing these mad shirts and trousers and all that, you know.

Bit freaky now, you know! (Laughs)

I had a white shirt and striped trousers on me,

thought I was the bees knees!

Look, I was with my girlfriend as well like.

Keep away from our door.

My brother Brian, a friend of his, was actually taking part in the competition,

and being Valentine's night the day before,

he'd asked the boss could he have time off,

and being Valentine's night, in the hotel industry, he said 'no'.

So whether he looked at them with the longing eyes or whatever, maybe.

So the boss at about, I think, was maybe midnight, and said, 'go'.

So he went. Now none of us knew he was there.

I knew George was going.

I think George had a date,

because he was after putting on a new shirt.

'Willie'...I says, 'you never go up there'.

'No' he said, 'I'm going up'.

Marcella...she told my parents that she was babysitting,

but I knew she was going to stardust.

And, of course, 'don't tell them they're going'.

And I hid her clothes for the Stardust in alleyo.

So when she was going babysitting, she went into the alleyo and got her clothes

and then went over to her friends and changed.

I didn't know...

Marcella had gone.

I wish they had never gone there anyway.

Ooh-oh, ooh-oh

Everybody was buzzing, to be going to the Stardust on Valentine's night

I'm in the mood for dancing

Most of the people that were in the disco competition, we knew.

I'd a navy three piece suit, red shirt, waistcoat...very Saturday Night Fever of me!

And a tie. Which, obviously you lose the tie the minute you get into any place.

We went in, and the first thing we noticed was the alcove,

shuttered off, where we normally sat was all shut off.

Celebrate - Kool And The Gang

We all got in and then my brother John, he was refused,

he was told he was too young.

John was 17, Martina was 16, she got in,

and em... he went home.

But as we walked in,

I noticed that the left hand side, which was the west alcove, was all closed off.

And I found that was very, very unusual.

Like in all the time I've been going there, that has never been closed off.

Never.

I had a glass of Harp. Now Mary had Martini and Martina had a Babysham.

So we're just sitting there and we were yapping away.

The competition started I think it was about 01:00.

Well I talk about it, talk about it, talk about .

There was about 25 of us in the final

and they were taking two off each time

we got picked out then again at the end.

We were brought up on the stage and says, 'these are the two winners of the competition'.

And then the DJ took us into the back,

he says, 'next week, will yous come up,

'we're gonna give yous your prizes and all?'

So the music started again.

Everyone's on the floor dancing.

It was after being a great night up to that, like we got our sausage and chips

that was included in the admission fee, 3 pound.

Somewhere along where the dance competition happened,

just about after that it just got very warm,

and I noticed it getting very warm.

Born...born to be alive

You see we're born

We were in the Lantern Rooms tidying around, that function was coming to an end.

One of the lounge staff come in to say there was a fire in the Stardust.

And we went in to see.

I noticed smoke just drifting across the ceiling

and I thought it was the DJ after letting off the artificial smoke.

I paid no attention to it.

The DJ announced, 'there's a small fire in the premises',

you know, 'don't panic, everything's under control'.

I was down on the dance floor when he said that,

and straight away I looked around for my sister to see where she was.

And I went up to her and said, 'come on, we better go'.

And she was saying 'sure it's only a little fire'. We could see it, it was in the corner.

It was on a seat.

That's what it looked like to me, anyway.

Walked over and we were standing quite close to the exits, but they were chained.

This bouncer run in with a fire extinguisher

and he lifted the shutter,

and there was a fire on one of the seats in the alcove, which we would have normally sat in.

He tried to tackle the fire, but whatever way he was doing it, aiming through the flame,

and eventually he dropped the fire extinguisher, and he ran.

And then with that, it's like a door was opened or a shutter

was pulled up or something, and the fire just went.

(Distant sound of screaming and glass breaking)

There was panic and mayhem, and then the DJ was telling people not to panic.

I just thought, that's it, I'm out of here.

The flames was going across the ceiling.

Then there was a gush, of fire.

And...

...it's like the material from the ceiling was falling on fire.

The ceiling was starting to collapse.

It was coming down on top of us.

The DJ made another announcement then

for everyone to make their way to the nearest exit.

We were running to and fro.

And...

we turned to go back to the kitchen door that came through

and it was locked.

Me, Mary and Martina and my friend, like, we had gone back and got our coats and bags

from where we were sitting.

There was a rush of everyone trying to get out

we were pushed to the ground and we were trampled on.

And I just remember, like, couldn't breathe right.

The smoke was choking us.

It was just like as though you were in hell.

And the next thing, like, I was knocked out unconscious.

(Phone rings)

I was in Tara Street Fire station.

The phone rang,

I answered the call.

The call was from a firefighter by the name of John Fitzsimons.

'I'm in the Stardust',

he said, 'premises is on fire'.

He said, 'take this very, very, very seriously'.

Basically, 'give us everything you've got'.

Once we got the message across, we were gone.

(Siren wails)

It was an inferno when I arrived.

I saw flames going up in the air, coming through the roof.

I think at that stage, the roof may have collapsed,

and I'd say the flames were 10 to 20 feet in the air, you know, above the building.

Because of the inferno,

we could not go near the scene, until the firemen had extinguished the fire.

The lights went out,

people screaming, (Sound of siren)

glasses smashed,

and the roars of the fire.

So we held onto each other

and we went through the bar.

Em...I slipped and fell.

Everyone was standing on me and trampling on me.

But then I thought I had died, because everything went deathly silent,

there wasn't a sound, and it was pitch black.

In the hallway, I knew I'd passed two friends who were panicking

but they were going nowhere, and screaming.

So I said, I know if I don't go in, they're gone.

So I ran back in, and I just flung them into the hall.

And as I turned to go, I fell.

Everybody was looking for people

that was the problem, you know.

People were coming back in through the doors.

I'd fallen onto the carpet,

which was leading to the hallway.

But then then I realised, I'm back on the dance floor,

I'm going the wrong way.

The smoke was thick, black smoke. You could nearly chew it, it was that thick.

But it was burning you at the same time.

Every breath I took, I was putting my hand over my face to keep

the breath in, and staying down as low as possible.

But when I got up, we ended up kicking this door open

and a chain bust open, and we all ended up falling out.

We got out at the side of the exit door,

it could be number four, the way they had it marked.

I'm sure I had me girlfriend by the hair,

'cause I had her right beside me, all the way out.

And we got outside, my shirt was torn off me, all down here.

I think everyone was sort of half clothed,

wherever way we were pulling at each other,

'cause, that was the only way out, you know,

they could see probably a bit of a light at the door and just climb to get out.

I had Martina's white blouse on me that night,

and a fella from outside seen the white blouse, and he had to come

in and kick this hand here because I was clung onto my sister.

He had kicked that hand, and then dragged me out

and my face was burning, my neck, my shoulders, me hands.

I was just like, I was screaming with the pain.

I remember there was a pile of sand, and I said I'd put my hands in it cooled me down.

But when I done that, I rubbed it into my hands and on my face

it just started stinging, me and I was screaming.

(Siren wails)

Then an ambulance man came up to me and he said, 'you've got to get in the ambulance'.

You could see like the light coming from a door being opened.

And slowly but surely there was people just pulling people out,

and eventually somebody pulled me out.

There was this guy who worked in the community centre, the youth leaders.

And I went over to him and said, 'Mick, will you bring me home?'

I actually thought I was going to sneak back into the house

and my mother wouldn't realise that I'd been out.

So he said to me, 'who are you?'

because he didn't recognise me,

and I said, it's Valerie Fallon'.

And he just asked me, 'what's that?'

And all the skin off my face was here like a chicken.

And I kind of took it off and it was in my hand and I just held it in my hand, while we got in the car.

And he drove me into Jervis Street.

(Siren wails)

There was girls on fire coming out.

I think I threw sand on one of the girls

because you were so in a panic, they were looking for everybody, you know.

We went around the Stardust about 7 times

looking for Jimmy, because people said they seen him outside.

He was again running around.

There for about an hour and a half looking for him.

And I said, 'he has to be gone off in an ambulance or something

because he knew that place off the bank of his hand, you know what I mean?

(Siren wails)

Jim came running in, says he 'there's a fire in the Stardust'.

Panic, and then every hell broke out then.

Yeah, hell broke out, yeah.

So he ran in there and rang the fire brigade, his colleagues,

and they told him it was a nasty one.

My father, he said, 'George and Willie are there,

'and we have to get up to the Stardust, and we know Marcella is babysitting'.

And then I had to tell them,

I said, 'no, Marcella is at the Stardust'.

And em...that's one thing I clearly remember.

He came over and he picked me up

and he shook me,

and he said, 'what the fuck do you mean?'

Excuse the language.

'What the fuck do you mean, she's in the Stardust?'

And I said, 'yeah' I said, 'she's not babysitting, she's gone.

'I hid her clothes in the alleyo'.

And he just dropped me down,

and they all just ran out of my sister's house.

They just ran out...yeah.

We lived in a cul-de-sac, so every second house,

somebody had, somebody that was up in the Stardust.

When we got outside,

it was as bad outside.

The screams coming from inside, and people that did go to exit doors had no chance.

There was no way that they would have got out those doors because they were chained

and because...the toilet windows had bars on.

There was no way out there.

'Jesus help us, get us out'...and then silence.

(Siren wails)

Seeing people that you had spoke to...

...couple of minutes beforehand...

...coming out.

Then there was...others trying to get back in...

...'cause their families were in there.

I was on D watch, and that's the watch that was on in the night of the Stardust.

I was in the North Strand.

And I arrived and seen all these kids coming out,

and they were all like, nylon was the thing at the time.

They were all there, their clothes were all burned

There's only 500 gallons of water on every fire engine,

and it'll only last for about ten to 15 minutes max.

And my job was to find a hydrant.

Hydrant outside, car parked over it.

And someone said, 'there's a hydrant across the road', so we had to cross the road.

And if there was, it was tarmacadamed off.

The officer said, 'Paul, forget it.

'It's a major rescue, get up there, start doing what you can.

'Get the kids out.'

So I went up and I can hear kids in the toilet.

So I shouted in to the kids,

'lie on the ground, smoke will rise and it'll stop you from choking'.

But the toilet windows were blocked.

I remember getting the phone call that night,

and my boss, he told me to get my backside out to Artane,

there'd been a fire in a disco called the Stardust.

I hadn't a clue where it was.

I remember jumping in my car and going over Butt Bridge.

I just followed the ambulances from there out to the Stardust.

(Siren wails)

I remember getting there and the fire engines were still dousing the Stardust.

And I remember the water was freezing on the road.

It was so cold that particular night, into the morning.

And it just stuck in my head how cold it was.

So many people there, ambulances, fire brigades, reporters, onlookers.

It was absolutely chaotic.

(Siren wails)

I remember arriving on Kilmore Road,

and I went over to fire officers,

and I just, they were working away, and I was asking them, you know, 'were you inside?

'What did you see?'

One fire officer said to me, 'there's more than just a few dead'.

And he just walked away.

The ones we saved were the ones we saved.

I remember going in one door,

and there was two girls, lying on the staircase.

They were pronounced dead almost at the beginning.

But the firemen were concentrating on, rescuing the living.

You know, their bodies could be moved at any time,

and it's a decision that nobody should have to make.

I started talking to people then and were saying 'there were doors locked,

'we couldn't get out the windows.

'People were falling all over the place'.

A lot of them said it was darkness, that the lights went out.

The people themselves, the young people,

I mean, some of them were only 16 years of age.

They shouldn't have been there.

They realised how lucky they were to have escaped this.

They didn't realise that they were cut, they were bruised.

There were a lot of them just looking for their friends.

And that impressed me because

even though they had escaped, they weren't thinking of themselves,

they were thinking of where the friends were,

because they hadn't a clue where...what happened to them.

At that time, firefighters were interchangeable with ambulance duties.

I was doing ambulance duty that night,

and I was met by the officer in charge,

and he said to me, 'like, there's already people here that you can take to hospital'.

I mean, we were so outnumbered, you know, it was unreal.

So it was just a question of closing the doors and taking them off

and the ambulance was so full,

people sitting in the front, people standing in the back,

and we were directed to James's Hospital.

The firemen, they had to go in and take out the bodies.

Some of them were, had fallen apart,

and they had to get them onto blankets or whatever they had.

And because there were so many,

they were bringing them out, dropping them down

and then we had a trail of ambulances coming,

to take the bodies away down to the morgue.

The third officer that was there,

he said, 'can you set up a temporary morgue along the wall

'and just make sure everybody comes out, put the body down there?'

And then my job was to hose them down,

make sure, 'cause their clothes were still burning.

(Siren wails in the distance)

The journey, because the ambulance was so loaded, was a good deal slower.

It couldn't be rushed.

Also, my colleague was trying to carry out

as many dressings as he possibly could to the people that were burned.

It was very, very silent... shocked.

Obviously, there was ambulances, everything turning up.

And this guy said, 'you better come with me,'

he says, 'you're in a bad way'.

I said 'no I've got to go home and tell my parents'.

He said 'no you need to come with me'.

And he brought me down to the ambulance,

and the only place available was the front seat beside the driver.

And he brought me around the front and says, 'you better take him',

he said, 'I can't take him in here', he said 'you have to take him'.

The ambulance driver just looked at me and says, 'fuck it, put him in'.

Pardon the French but, he just said 'put him in'.

So, in I sat,

and he slammed the door

and then when shot off to the Mater Hospital.

(Siren wails)

When I was a senior student nurse at that time, I was 20,

and I remember being on a break,

and I heard this trolley,

and I looked outside,

and I thought it was a black person sitting up on the trolley.

But I learned afterwards, it was a young girl.

Next minute all the phones were ringing in all the wards.

(Phone rings) And we got the message,

'all senior student nurses head down to A&E.

'There's been a disaster.'

They were all my own age, a lot of them,

and some of them were younger, 16,

em, they were just so young.

Went to try many hospitals, every hospital along the way.

There was porters outside, seeing the ambulance coming in,

and they were doing that to say, the hospital is full.

So then I ended up, right, going to St. James's and St. Vincent's.

And in the end, I ended up in Doctor Steevens' Hospital,

that was the last hospital, right?

And I was admitted in there.

There was a lot of people in the hospital,

and as I was looking at them, I was saying to myself, 'oh my God, look at them.

'They are really bad'.

I didn't realise they were doing the same back to me,

because they couldn't recognise me.

I don't know if anybody remembers Jarvis Street,

there was a tiny little car park,

it's really where the ambulances went in.

But Mick drove into the car park, and a security guy came out

and of course, he just took one look at the two of us,

and we were black from head to toe.

And Mick was saying, 'there's actually been a fire in the Stardust,

'does anybody know?

'You know, we drove here.'

When I'm telling you that we were talking, we were, like, not talking,

it was like gasping for air when we were speaking,

so I don't know how much sense we made or, you know, what they understood what we

were telling them, but there was more people going to come.

And then the doors opened, and they just fell in the door.

The smell of smoke, I'll never forget it.

And their greyed faces, you know, from the smoke.

There were so many, you know, we hadn't enough tourniquets.

And so I was squeezing the arm to get up

the vein for the doctor to get the cannula in.

And I took away my hand and the skin on my hand of the person there.

I went into the Mater Hospital and there was more ambulances arriving,

and I was then up saying, giving people seats and get that girl over here.

And this doctor walked out and says, 'what's he doing up and about?

''Get him behind the curtain.

And they knocked me out,

and after that, weeks later, I woke up in intensive care.

I was brought into Dr Steevens' Hospital

and I was put to a cubicle as everyone else was,

and I remember, like, you know, I thought that we had been forgotten about

because the curtain was pulled, right, and

couldn't get off the bed, right, I was in agony,

I couldn't breathe, and my hands was hurting me,

I just kept doing that,

banging them out side of the cubicle.

And trying to scream, but I'd no voice.

(Lights flicker on and buzz)

And eventually somebody did come, a doctor, and I was put on a life support machine,

because one lung had collapsed on me

and the other lung was badly damaged with smoke inhalation.

There was water everywhere.

There was a stench of that acrid smell of burning.

There was no cordons or anything,

so we just walked up and, there was a guard with a flashlight and he just opened it

and I looked in.

Everything was just charred, and the smell would knock you out.

It was like Dante's Inferno.

There were a group of people that were

in a kind of a semicircle, that had been obviously friends,

and they had obviously put their arms around one another, put their heads down

because of the speed of what went on around them and all of that,

they really didn't have much of an option for escape.

And basically what happened was they had been fused together,

and you know, it was a gruesome undertaking,

but they had to be separated

and it was a matter of breaking them apart

as reasonably as possible.

And that's what we got involved in.

Yeah.

It was gruesome work. Yeah.

Nobody walks away from that.

I got a phone call at home that had been a fire.

The lights were all gone and they want the place lit up.

We hooked up the generator,

which is a small trailer, and loaded it with lights and off we went.

We had to try and get our generator in onto the floor.

So we parked beside the fire escape

and we went around to the main door to get in,

see if we could we get the fire escape door opened, we couldn't,

it was chained up, you know.

so there was a Policeman there from Santry

and he got his foot up to it and he kicked it out, and the bar broke off.

And still, still chained, but the bar broke off.

Well, there's a few firemen still damping out bits of the fire,

but otherwise there was nobody in the building, only us.

Remember me aunt saying that night,

is it really, really bad?'

She said 'half of Coolock is gone.'

It was a dream.

The whole thing is a dream or a nightmare that was unfolding.

(News report beeping signal)

As dawn came

em you began to see the shell of the Stardust,

you know, that charred and the smell and the smoke was still rising from it.

Well, in the early hours of the morning, after most of the bodies had been removed,

a Garda sergeant took me into the Stardust club.

AUDIO CLIP: God Almighty.

The bar and Silver Swan,

they weren't touched at all, just the Stardust itself. The whole area.

And from 10:00 this morning,

relatives will begin the very painful and difficult task of identification.

In a way, we didn't know then what the scale of the tragedy was,

of how many people had died and the numbers who were injured.

Charlie Haughey arrives,

and the most bizarre thing of all,

we walked through the Stardust.

This affects inside with Charlie and the inspectors.

We were allowed in, talk about forensics.

It's the most bizarre thing,

we were actually allowed to trudge through it.

REPORTER: Taoiseach, could I ask you, indeed, is there any room for suggestion,

or any room for suggestion that in fact, this fire might have been malicious?

Can you say? No.

I don't know anything at all about that yet.

The Gardaí are here and they have no, not yet come to any decision at all.

Taoiseach, have you a message for the people in the area?

Em...

...this is my...

...this is my native parish, and

I would know, I know most, very, very large number of the families concerned.

Em...

Many of the parents, they woke up and they saw

their child's bed hadn't been slept in that night,

and in a panic, they did a run around all the main hospitals,

hoping to find their children.

REPORTER: Now here with a look at the morning papers, P.P. O'Reilly.

St Valentine's Day, 1981

will be remembered in Dublin forever, as the Dublin papers cry out in many words

and pictures the sorrows of the night.

The loss of the young.

But every owner or manager of any enterprise where the public gathers,

must be jolted and shocked into checking at speed his or her own responsibilities

should fire or other sudden disaster strike.

Some extra devotion to safety

must be wrenched from this awful experience.

A steady stream of relatives and friends have been calling at the morgue since ten.

For the families that had to come and identify them, it was absolutely terrible.

(Tearfully) It took three of my kids

who just went through to enjoy themselves.

Where all the emergency exits open at the time of the fire?

He was pushing it and wouldn't open.

All the doors have chains on them, and the chains are hanging on the doors open.

There will be a high court judge presiding over the tribunal.

We thought this was great. He's gung ho,

he's going to get this sorted out.

You can't say probable arson.

It's either arson or isn't.

And it allowed the Butterlys to receive 600,000 pounds in compensation.

600,000 punts,

I mean...

Hundreds more injured.

The hospitals and homes littered with the casualties.

The areas of Coolock, Donycarney, Artane,

devastated.

Their young, the pride of their families,

the nations tomorrow, taken swiftly, cruelly from them. (Voice fades out)