Stardust survivor tells inquest of watching a girl burn in the nightclub fire

A STARDUST NIGHTCLUB survivor has told an inquest jury of spending the last 42 years being reminded every day of seeing a girl on fire in the burning building and no one being able to help her.

“I have to face every day for 42 years of going back and looking in exit four and seeing this girl burning,” Benny Murphy today told the Dublin District Coroner’s Court, during the inquest into the fire that killed 48 when it swept through the Stardust in the early hours of February 14, 1981.

In his original statement, which was read into the record by the court registrar, Murphy, who was 18 at the time, said that he saw the fire catching onto the roof and then the lights went out. He said there was thick black smoke and a pile-up of people at the door of exit four, before the door suddenly opened and he got out.

“I was looking into exit four when I saw a girl burning, and no one could do anything for her as the exit door was on fire,” he said.

Murphy told Gemma McLoughlin-Burke BL, a member of the coroner’s legal team, that when the fire started and the roof went into flames, he saw the white tiles of the ceiling melting and “dripping down onto the people and the tables below”.

“There was pandemonium, people were all over the place,” he said.

He said that outside, he could hear people screaming from inside the toilets, as a lot of people went there to take cover from the fire.

At the conclusion of his evidence, Murphy said: “Now that I look back, every day I have to wake up to the memories of this girl in the fire exit. I don’t know if she survived. It was a horrible thing to experience, not only for me but for the families that lost their loved ones. For the people who survived, there should be some kind of counselling. This affects people in different ways.”

He said that there was no taking away from the fact that 48 people lost their lives.

“I have to face every day for 42 years of going back and looking in exit four and seeing this girl burning, and you can’t get her because the doors are on fire,” he said.

The jury also heard the evidence of Sandra Hyland, who was 15 at the time and in the company of Paula Byrne, one of the young people who lost their lives.

In her original statement, read out by the court registrar, Hyland said she could feel heat from behind a curtain and after ten minutes she could smell something burning. She said that a bouncer pushed up the curtain, and she saw a row of seats ablaze. She said she saw the flames burst upwards and go across the ceiling, and people started to panic and run in all directions.

“The place was black with smoke. I heard people shouting: ‘They’re locked.’ Everyone then rushed toward the main entrance,” she said.

She said she was carried out of exit two by the crowd. She said that outside, she looked for Paula Byrne but failed to locate her. Hyland told McLoughlin-Burke that the fire “rolled in waves across the ceiling”.

“When I was outside the main entrance, I was going around looking for my friends. I could hear people banging and screaming from inside. People were up around the windows of the toilets trying to help,” said Hyland.

She told McLoughlin-Burke that she did not see anyone getting out of those windows.

In response to questioning by Brenda Campbell KC, representing a number of the families of the victims, Hyland said that the heat she felt was like “when you’ve been outside and it’s cold and there is a radiator radiating heat on your back”.

She said that she first got out of the nightclub and then went back in to look for her friends, and people were panicking. She said it felt like people were converging into one area, and it was “like a funnel of people” coming through.

Ms Hyland told Dáithí Mac Cárthaigh BL, representing a number of the families, that the smell she got in the nightclub was a “smell like rubber, that burning chemical smell.” She said the fire was “rolling in waves” across the ceiling.

Evidence was also heard today from Margaret Lynch. In her original statement, Ms Lynch said that it seemed as if the wall was on fire. She said she ran for exit four, where there was a crowd of people and the smoke was terrible. She said the lights went out and people were banging on the door trying to open it.

“I was there for about five minutes before they burst open the door. I was actually pulled out the door by someone as I had been on my hands and knees after falling over somebody else,” she said.

Ms Lynch told Ms McLoughlin-Burke that when she first saw the fire, she thought “it’ll be grand, they’ll put it out” and she probably continued dancing.

“I just remember standing there, seeing the fire, and then the lights went out,” she said.

She told the inquest that she could see the fire “dripping” from the ceiling and there was “bedlam” in the nightclub. She said she headed to exit four and the lights went out.

“I remember hearing someone say: ‘Please open the door.’ I could hear banging at the door trying to open it, and then I could just feel this wind coming in on my face. I remember arriving out through the door on my hands and knees,” she said.

She said that when she got outside, she saw people trying to get the girls out who were trapped in the toilets.

“They were using hatchets and everything trying to break the glass and they couldn’t,” she said.

She told Bernard Condon SC, representing a number of the families, that people were like “headless chickens going around”. She said that she fell on her way out.

“I was on top of people and people were on top of me. A guy pulled me and lifted me up. When you’re lying there, it’s your last breath, it’s horrific, the feeling that you can’t breathe,” she said, adding that the next day she was coughing up “black mucus”.

The inquest continues tomorrow in the Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital.