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LAST UPDATE | 15 Jan
ONE OF IRELAND’S oldest bakeries has been forced to close due to the damage caused by a fire in the early hours of this morning.
Healy’s Bakery in Blackpool, Co Cork, was established in 1862 and the family-run business spans six generations.
In a statement, gardai said they were alerted to an incident of criminal damage by fire at Healy’s Bakery this morning.
A spokesperson said the incident occurred at around 6am and that the investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, Cork City Fire Brigade said it was mobilised to reports of smoke just after 6am this morning, and shortly after the incident was upgraded to a live commercial fire.
A total of three pumping appliances, one hydraulic platform, and 23 fire personnel, including a senior officer, attended the scene.
A number of neighbouring properties were also evacuated and one person was taken to hospital.
Cork City Fire Brigade said the scene was handed over to gardaí for investigation and all fire units were back in their station before 9am.
Speaking to Cork’s 96FM Opinion Line with PJ Coogan, owner Rachel Healy said she was “devastated”.
“Unfortunately, we won’t be up and running for a couple of weeks anyway, or months even,” she added.
Healy described the smoke damage as “desperate”.
“Everything will have to be thrown out,” said Healy, “there’s nothing salvageable in food production.”
She said that the local community has been “very nice” and that people have “offered to come in and help”.
Healy said one of the staff members went in to open at six o’clock this morning, and he said there was smoke billowing out of the building.
“He called the fire brigade straight away and the whole inside, it went up in seconds,” said Healy.
She added that the bakery is now flooded and that Irish Water has been called upon because the pipes have “melted and burnt out and water is pouring everywhere”.
Healy, a sixth-generation baker, said she’s been “exhausted” by the fire and that the incident has been “emotionally draining”.
“I’m just distraught,” said Healy.
“When you’re working for 35 years making cakes and the next thing, the whole lot is gone.”
She added: “I just have to apologise to people who have birthday and christening and wedding cakes and all the celebration cakes for the weekend.”
Healy said she hopes her customers can understand and added that it’s “lovely” to be a “nice bit of history” when making cakes for people on special occasions.
“When you’re making a birthday cake for somebody and then they bring in their child and their grandchild and then their great grandchild, it’s just lovely.
“It’s a bit of history and it’s a nice bit of history.”
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What a devastating disaster. To destroy such an old established business like this. Hope ye can stay going and regroup. Nothing sacred anymore.
Ann
Maybe someone else nearby with a Catering Kitchen could allow her to use their kitchen on a quiet, or a shut shop, day? Esp’ if it has its own “Free Power”/Off-Grid Renewable supply (to keep overheads down – for both parties). A lot of places don’t open on Mondays, Tuesdays, & Wednesdays anymore. If she could still meet even half her clients’ orders that fit with the days she has kitchen access (for retention of freshness), it would give her a fighting chance to keep the business *in business* and ticking over while the Tradies are in the bakery unit restoring and renovating the place…. after the insurance finally inspects & processes whatever payment they intend.
Also – There should not be any water *still* pouring out into her shop unit. Would the Firefighters not have given her a hand there to find the external stopcock and turn off the mains supply to the store entirely.
Unless it’s coming from a loft or rooftop storage tank? But even then, it should quit eventually when it runs out of water . . . .unless, again, the mains outside is not turned off and is still supplying the tank.
We’ll keep the fingers crossed for them anyway.
Best of luck bouncing back
Hope they’ve got adequate insurance that will cover rebuilding and possibly loss of earnings. Even so, next year’s premium might be off the wall. Hate to see a decent family-run business like that destroyed. Not too many left anymore.
Is it possible that the fire could be caused by the ole reliable climate change claim ? Asking for an insurance friend of mine
1862 was a long time ago. Thought it was mostly spuds on the menu then
@The Hard Road: Is that what you thought? Read much?
@Jack Hayes: Comments section is full of w anchors.
@Jack Hayes: I stand corrected. I had thought there were lots of people subsisting on potatoes rather than cream cakes during that period of Irish history. Now I know better
@The Hard Road: Like the man in the orthopaedic shoes.
@The Hard Road: Everything was on the menu then, if you had the wherewithal to pay for it!
@The Hard Road: You are on the right track …-ish. Spuds were never the problem. Wholesale confiscation of all livestock, tillage crops, and grains, by Britain, as “Taxes” surplus to coin taxes and rents, were the problem. All the “tenant” farmer was left with to sustain themselves were usually a few spuds and other scarce bits. Potato crop failed the years of the Famine Genocide, AND Britain still continued to levy and escalate confiscation of all harvests and livestock.
But you would definitely be correct. Very few indigenous Irish would have had the option or opportunity to eat home made cakes, let alone *purchased* bakery goods from the City. Back then, the shop probably predominantly supplied indigenous Protestants who had favourable access to higher salaried professional occupations and lay jobs; and the non-indigenous, like Brits, who held all the Wealth (from Resource stripping).
That is not to say there wouldn’t have been a fair few indigenous Catholics who had reasonably well paid jobs and/or happened to have multiple teenage children capable of and succeeding in getting a lower paid City job who’s wages would then all go into the pot for the mother to run the house (and, buy a rare cake on a rare special occasion).
So it wasn’t wholly impossible for indigenous Irish Catholics to purchase a cake.
It was just far more probable the Protestant Privileged, and the foreign Resource Strippers, were the more common customer (possibly alongside tea shops and other commercial enterprises that didn’t have an in-house baker)
@Pink Freud: comprehensive and factual answer.
@Pink Freud: Sort of what we have now but with multinationals
That picture brought me back .Terrible news and places like this are very few nowadays. Some are intent on destruction and for what purpose? I hope they recover. I have a yearning for a jam doughnut now.
Ireland wants a franchise here. Greggs maybe
@Thesaltyurchin: But do we really, you have clearly have not tasted anything from Greggs.
@Michael Ward: Sarcasm. Apologies, it’s a hard one when read in context. But we do prefer our shop owners to run a Centra, our coffee to be Starbucks. Imagine it’s less work for officials to do, bigger employers, lower wages. If a costa goes bust it probably doesn’t even register a blip on their overall books. Ireland has never liked the SME (imo).
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