On the ninth of February 1880 the pantomime Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was playing at the Old Theatre Royal on Hawkins Street. A matinee performance was about to be given on behalf of the Dublin Charities fund under the patronage and presence of the Duchess of Marlborough.

As the lighting up time approached a boy with a burning taper approached the Vice regal box, suddenly there was a loud explosion a shrill scream and a clatter of hasty feet and at once the curtains of the box broke into a vivid flame. The gas bracket had been left loose by a plumber and a gas cloud had formed.

The fire rapidly gained its hold on the furnishings and was starting to burn into the wings as the manager Mr. Francis Egerton quickly brought the stage fire hose to bear on the flames. Alas the apparatus was out of order and took several precious minutes to repair. Although urged by stage hands to leave he fought on but to no avail.
By the time Captain Ingram and his gallant little brigade arrived all hope of saving Mr. Egerton and the historic old playhouse had to be abandoned. It was now a question of protecting the adjoining buildings from the danger as the flames were now roaring and hissing nearly fifty feet above the walls of the doomed theatre.

Several serious gas explosions complicated the issue and within an hour the vast roof fell in toppling one or two heavy walls in the process. A detachment of military police with fixed bayonets was called to hold back the immense unruly crowd which had gathered to watch the spectacle.
As far as is known this was the only great Dublin fire at which a Lord Lieutenant attended having arrived on the scene at four o clock. The fires burned for several days afterwards with the entire street being in danger at the height of the blaze.

The collision

The accident took place late on a Sunday evening with young people returning to Dublin after spending the weekend in the country. It was at Cherryville junction between Kildare and Monasterevin that disaster struck. Passengers travelling from Galway were stunned as their train crashed into the back of another train travelling from Tralee, which had stopped because of engine failure. The force of the impact was so great that according to one eyewitness the last carriage jumped 30 feet in the air.

At that time, CIE's central control had no radio contact with its trains. However they quickly realised that something was seriously wrong. A radio controller of the Naas ambulance service commented: "The 999 emergency telephone system went crazy that night". He received a call from the Dublin Fire Brigade at approximately 10:10 pm alerting that an accident had occurred. When they arrived, the full scale of the disaster became appallingly clear. The scene was later described by a local priest, Rev. John Byrne: "It was unbelievable. I've seen photographs of train crashes and that's exactly what it looked like. One carriage was up in the air, it was just a tangle of metal." Within minutes he had administered the last rites to four people at the scene.

The confusion

According to one member of the Monasterevin Order of Malta, the Monasterevin Fire Brigade were "one of the first on the scene to cut out the victims from the mangled carriages". The passengers were who had not been hurt tried their best to help, digging out the injured and using carriage doors as stretchers. There was little panic but a great deal of confusion about what had happened. Passengers with suspected broken bones were laid on tops of tables from the carriages until the emergency services arrived. As scores of shocked and bewildered people emerged on to the road, private coaches cars and vans were all used to take the victims to medical aid. Hospitals in Naas, Portlaoise and Tullamore called in extra staff to deal with the crisis as the fire and emergency services, together with Gardaí and members of the defence forces worked by spotlight to free people who were still trapped in the wreckage. The crash had taken place about 200 yards from the main Kildare-Monasterevin road. Army personnel were sent to keep the traffic moving, preventing onlookers from interfering with the emergency services work. A small number of looters were seen rummaging through the carriages and had to be chased from the scene. At one point, firefighters had to divert a spotlight to locate a youth who was hiding in the marshes waiting for the opportunity to loot some more. Newbridge Station Officer Patrick Mockley commented at the time: "Instead of helping casualties they were helping themselves but Gardaí removed that type of person very quickly."
By 2 am there were reports that there might still be some people trapped, and the dead and injured remained unidentified. CIE, hospitals and newspapers were inundated with calls from anxious friends and relatives as the grim news was broadcast over the airwaves. RTE radio remained on air throughout the night giving details of what had happened. By 3 am there was little more to be done. Alone spotlight illuminated the wreckage where some bodies still lay trapped in a compression of steel and wood. The dimensions of the crash had become horrifyingly clear. The dining car of the Tralee train was completely shattered, its wooden walls lying in pieces around the track.
Credit to Fire Service
The final death toll was seven, including one married couple from Ballymount Cross in Dublin. It was later reported that they had been travelling on the train because their car had been stolen two months previously. The following day political and church leaders across the country expressed their horror at what had happened. It was widely acknowledged, however, that the fire and emergency services had done a fine job in the circumstances. The then Minister for Finance Alan Dukes, who lived near the scene of the crash, congratulated them for the way in which they had responded to the disaster. "It is clear that the Kildare Emergency
Plan worked very effectively and that it got under way at the earliest possible moment" he said.

First Hand Report
Kildare chief fire officer Michael Fitzsimons attended the scene of devastation 17 years ago. He vividly remembers the night of horror as though it was yesterday. "in August 1983," he describes, "I had been in CFO in Kildare for just a couple of months. It was a Sunday night and I had been away for the weekend. Shortly after I got home I got a call from the station to tell me that there was a possibility of a crash. Incidentally, there had been another completely separate incident that same incident. Three wagons from a goods train had been derailed inan accident at Moyvalley. These wagons sometimes carry a cargo of acrylonitrile which is highly toxic and explosive, for a while I was worried that this could lead to a serious accident. "Before too long it became clear what had happened at Cherryville and I saw that everybody from the stations in Monasterevin and Newbridge was asked to turn out. I myself had to stay at headquarters to monitor operations and didn't get to the scene until the early morning. The major problem was that the accident happened in the middle of a bog late at night. Most passengers had no idea where they were and in a confused state made their way towards the main road. In a train crash it's often quite hard to determine exactly how many people were aboard at the time. There was a lot of confusion just trying to establish the number of injured as many of them had been taken away by private cars.

Ernergency Plan
"We had an Emergency Plan that had been devised by, the council, involving close cooperation with the Gardaí and the ambulance service. At the control centre we contacted the county engineer who was the controller of operations. We also had the army on scene to provide emergency lighting with spotlights. These days we would be better equipped with generators.
"Looking back I think we can say that the rescue efforts were well managed, given the very difficult circumstances we had to deal with. Our station officer from Newbridge, Patrick Mocklev, turned out to be one of the heroes of the hour - he took control of things and orchestrated the rescue operations very well.
"I remember the final body being taken out ?it was that of the waiter in the restaurant car. We saw his blood dripping from the wreckage. He had been very badly trapped and it took a long time to get him out. The whole scene was horrendous. It was surreal to see a train in that condition and also quite traumatic. I certainly hope I never see anything like it again."

After effects
"Thankfully we now have a good record of rail safety in this country, certainly compared to Britain. We're also more conscious now of the post? traumatic stress that firefighters can experience. Dealing with disasters of this kind is part of the job but that doesn't mean that you're not affected by it. Almost all of the men who were there that night are gone now. But it's an incident that I still think about. You have to be mentally prepared for something like that, knowing that a similar incident could happen again tomorrow. That's part of the job though."

Perhaps some buildings are accident prone. Or maybe, when you've been around for two-hundred and sixty years you're bound to have a couple of mishaps. But it does seem that the Dining Hall in Trinity College Dublin has an abnormally unfortunate history.

It was the famous victim of a fire in 1984. The unfortunate set of events that unfolded on the night of Friday 13th July 1984 may be enough to arouse suspicion. But the trail of misfortune actually dates back to as far as the mid-eighteelith century. In fact very shortly after it was first built in the 1740's it collapsed twice, and had to be entirely rebuilt. Once re erected again, the Dining Hall's fortune settled somewhat, and it managed to bloom into the heart of Trinity College life. Since 1843, this building held within its walls the common room for academic staff. But the main section of the building was the dining hall, where staff and scholarship students ate evening meals together, supping customary free Guinness from white enamelled jugs.

The building itself mirrors social changes within the college, Reflecting a somewhat historical shift in the 1960's and 70's when Trinity was becoming a more culturally acceptable place for Catholics to study, the building was extended twice to cope with a swell in the number of students. These extensions we relatively modern, but as luck would have it, the fire of July 1984 concentrated its destruction on the older, more valuable part.

Raising the Alarm

Strangely enough, it was the night Of Friday the 13th when the fire arose from the electrical wiring in the bell-tower. At seven p.m. Professor George Dawson, who was in the Senior Common Room (at the upstairs part of the building), heard crackling and smelt smoke. As soon as he spotted the smoke the top of the spiral staircase he then telephoned a college porter at the front gate. The fire brigade was called instantly.

At the same rime, the Entertainment Officer at the college, 20 year old Mick McCaughan was making dinner for some friends in house number 30 within Trinity where he lived.

Mick recalls that the group had smelt something burning and that at some stage the suspicion went quickly from being toast to a nearby building.

His friend, Barry Cooke says that he saw the fire first and ran to the front gate to raise the alarm. He then rushed back to collect his friends and they joined forces with Professor Dawson in the fight to save the valuable paintings from the burning building.

Mick McCaughan remembers the event as being somewhat surreal. Being very familiar with the strict traditions of Trinity he was stunned at the way the fire drastically altered them for a few hours. "The Dining Hall had always been such a formal place," he told Fire Call. "It's where the academic staff and the 'schols' (students who had been awarded scholarships for academic excellence) ate their evening meals. The walls were covered with huge
portraits of former provosts and benefactors who looked down on generations of students. I was used to seeing this place as the heart of a tradition of elegance and control. But all of a sudden that was turned upside down. We scrambled to what we could. Paintings that you were once frightened to touch were being pulled frantically off the walls.

The hierarchy was forgotten, and whether you were a student, a by-passer, or the professor it didn't matter. Everyone was reduced to being a pair of hands. It was very strange. It was a moment of chaos in a place which had always been so dignified."

Fighting the Fire

Four units of the fire brigade from Tara Street Station arrived quickly, including a tender with a ladder extension. The ladder was hoisted up above the clock face on the front of the building. One fireman, smothered in a blanket of smoke, climbed to the top of the ladder. Towering over the smouldering roof, he switched on his hose. But only a dribble of water came out.

By 7.30pm the fire had broken through the left hand side of the roof. Slates which had split from the heat began to slide down it's side, crashing into the rooms below. Minutes later the fire had pushed several large holes through the roofing. Flames shot through and a strong south westerly wind fanned the fire as it spread towards the centre of the roof.

Men on the ground fiddled with taps, hoping that the water flow would pick up. Barry Cooke, (who had discovered the fire and just happened to be a plumber), explained to firemen that old buildings have pipes and even mains that are too small. Also the old pipes tended to get clogged and it would take some time to clear them. He helped the men in their search for the nearest working hydrant. Standby pipes at Pearse Street were hooked up, and the street was closed off. Hoses from four sections of the Fire Brigade pumped the vital supply of water across the road. The fire had been spreading rapidly during the frenzied search for water, which had lasted half an hour.

Rescuing the Relics

0n the ground below, a human chain had been formed by members the public, students and staff. This rescue party brought valuables out of the back of the building as the dames licked the walls above their heads. They were swiftly transported to the safety of the College Chapel nearby. As firemen fought to control the fire at the front and on the roof, Professor Dawson and Dr. Scan Barrett could be seen at an upstairs window beside the Senior Common Room immediately below the fire. They spoke to firemen as they organised the rescue team to move the valuable chairs, lamps, paintings and some silver from the vault inside.

At 8 o'clock the portrait of Queen Elizabeth (the foundress of the college) was "carried out head first", followed by an 18th century provost saved by Mick McCaughan, who the papers described as "a student with a mohawk hair-do and several assorted earrings in each earlobe."

However once the central roof beams caught fire, the fire service brought a halt to the rescue operation. After the portrait of Bishop Berkeley emerged, the building was declared unsafe, and the team joined the others outside to watch the firefighters battle with the inferno.

Chaotic Order

At the height of the blaze, flames were leaping several feet high through the roof. Dense yellow-black acrid fumes and smoke billowed out around the Trinity Square while a strong wind blew ash out onto Pearse Street. A further two sections of the brigade arrived at the scene along with an ambulance.

Thousands of people gathered in the Front Square and College Street. They gaped in fascination and in horror as debris clapped the ground below and smoke billowed out above the clock face, which as the photos reveal was not actually telling the right time. Stuck at a couple of minutes to twelve, even the clock seemed to be partaking in the spirit of chaos. "It was half like going to the movies, half like going to a wake," said a reporter at the scene of the fire.

Firemen with axes smashed down the door into a laundry in the basement. Other firefighters put oxygen cylinders and masks and attacked the enemy through the main door Then at about 8. 30pm, the bell-tower plummeted into the cast gable. The fire spread backwards, gutting the beams and melting the lead. One fireman was struck on the back of the neck by a beam from the collapsing roof. He was rushed to St. Vincent's hospital.

After two hours, the firefighters had successfully brought the fire to it's knees. "Inside the Dining Hall last night, under an open sky," wrote the Irish Times for the following day's news. "The last embers fell from the few remaining roof beams onto a floor covered with charred timber, rubble and water. On the walls still hang five large paintings that seem miraculously to be intact." There were fears that the pictures might fall during the night into the hot embers. Luckily this did not occur.

Aftermath

Despite what may be considered a curiously unfortunate building, some luck managed to prevail. Five years prior to the fire, Trinity had carried out a detailed survey of the building. Photographs and accurate measurements of every feature of the Dining Hall proved their worth when it came to the precise restoration job that followed.

At a cost of £2 million the Trinity College Dining hall was restored exactly as it had been. Almost all of the paintings survived the fire. Only one of those that had witnessed the entire inferno and the falling roof was completely destroyed. But it was replaced. Smoke damage and shrunken canvases were repaired in a Welsh workshop. Frames were reguilded in Dublin. The entire paricling within the building remained intact. The grand chandelier was fixable.

Although there is no physical trace of the fire to be found, the night of that fateftil Friday the 13th, when the lung of learning in the heart of Dublin ci~, choked itself with smoke, is burned into the memory of all who saw it.

Mick McCaughan no longer has a mohawk, and writes for the Irish Times from South America. And in a somewhat strange coincidence, Barry Cooke became Trinity College's head maintenance man nine years later. .He assures Fire Call that the pipes have been replaced and there is a 7outine 'running of the water' to prevent any blocking. And the Dining Hall clock tells the correct time for now….

An Unprepared Target
The Luftwaffe attacks on Belfast had begun in summer of 1940. The city was totally unprepared. People did not believe that Hitler's army would travel 1,000 miles to get to Belfast. Some people disagreed, but were ignored. "The government has been slack, dilatory and apathetic," the parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Edmond Warnock said in May 1941.

Trying to Prepare for a Possible Attack
In the summer of 1940, John MacDermott, the newly appointed Minister of Public Security; tried to improve the defences of the city but he was shocked to find that their only ration of fire equipment had been sent back to Britain. A cabinet colleague had thought that the equipment was being wasted in Belfast, where it was not needed. By the time that John MacDermott discovered this, the supplies were desperately restricted. And despite all his efforts, he couldn't get the extra firefighting equipment due to general shortages.
In the autumn of 1940 MacDermott began a frantic programme of shelter construction. However, when large pumps and valves for fire hoses arrived, there wasn't time to train the new Auxiliary Fire service. And so, when the German Luftwafte turned its destructive attention on, Belfast, they looked down upon a city which was almost entirely defenceless. The city had no fighter squadrons, no balloon barrage and only twenty anti?aircraft guns when the war began. There were only four public air?raid shelters,, made of sandbags, located at the City Hall, together with underground toilet's?in the Squares.
Not a single shelter was provided anywhere else in Northern Ireland. There were no searchlights, no night fighters, no effective Observer Corps and no smoke screens.
In the first 10 months of the war, only 200 public shelters and 4,000 household? shelters were erected. In March, 1941, it was estimated that Belfast had only half, of the anti?aircraft cover approved for the city. The general attitude that it was unlikely for Belfast to be attacked was clearly demonstrated by the fact that 1,000 evacuees had been sent to Northern Ireland from England in April, 1941. People had hired themselves into a false sense of security that the distance from northern France was deemed too great to risk planes running out of fuel on the return flight.
It was also thought that the Republic of Irelands neutrality and its territorial claims to the entire island of Ireland would dissuade German attacks. It was thought that Hitler would not risk the Republic's neutrality by bombing the North. On March 24 1941, concern for the lack of defence in Belfast urged John MeDermott, Minister for Security, to write to the Prime Minister, John Andrews. "The enemy could not easily reach Belfast in force except during a period of moonlight," he said in this letter. "The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn."

Attack ? Easter 1941
Unfortunately, McDermott was proved right when on the 7th April 1941 Belfast experienced the first of three air raids. Thirteen people were killed. This raid revealed to the Germans how entirely defenceless the city was. On the night of 15th April, the Luftwaffe returned. A force of 180 aircraft dropped high explosive bombs and parachute mines on the city. This was a catastrophe for Belfast. Immense damage was done and large areas of the city were soon in flames.
In the early hours of the 16th April, John McDcrmott phoned Dublin and asked for the Republic's help to fight the fires and rescue trapped people. MeDermott was later unable to remember who it was he actually spoke to that night. And there are no records ?of the request in either Dublin? or Belfast.

Anyhow, the decision had to he made by DeValera, the Taoiseach. It involved Ireland's neutrality, and was, in effect, a deeply political issue.
At the same time though, a very quick decision was needed. And it was made. Within the hour Dublin Fire Brigade's Chief Officer, Major Comerford was in Tara Street station appealing for volunteers. Altogether thirty volunteers came forward in Tara Street, and a total of 13 vehicles from Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Drogheda and Dundalk, all under the command of Divisional Officer Rodgers crossed the border at Kileen. From there they were escorted across the border by the RUC. Thomas Coleman of Dublin Fire Brigade spoke to Sean Redmond of IMPACT in 1996 about his involvement in the event. The article, written by Redmond, is one of the only documented pieces that tell us about how the Irish firemen in the Republic managed to break a law of neutrality, by helping their brothers in need in the North.

Coleman remembered that they left Tara Street in green Goddesses, at about 5am, and arrived in Chichester Street at about 8 am. Throughout the journey the firefighter held onto the back of the uncovered vehicles. "We were lucky it wasn't lashing with rain," Coleman told Redmond. Coleman also recalled fighting a fire at a big ropeworks. "We were belting at it because the flames had to be out before blackout," he said. After spending the day fighting the fires, the thirteen appliances returned south late the same day. The reason that they had to come back was, had any of the firefighters been injured or killed in the raid that was to follow that night, the repercussions for Ireland's neutrality would have been huge. A total of 745 fives were lost in the raid, one of the ,highest casualty figures for a single raid during the war.
After the first set of attacks at Easter, the authorities stung into action, ordered further firefighting equipment and pumps, which started arriving from Britain immediately. On the morning after the attack, MacDermott initiated another major plan to evacuate the city. Belfast Corporation had recruited 230 full?time firemen, a mere quarter of the number it had been empowered to recruit. There were also 1,600 part?time firemen who had hardly been trained at all.

The Blitz Continues
Fire Brigade crews from the Republic were to make the journey to Belfast shortly afterwards, On Sunday 4th May 1941, at one o'clock in the afternoon, German pilots again arrived over Belfast. Visibility was good, and within two minutes they had reached their target, the dock area of the city. The Harland and Wolff shipyard was destroyed. These workshops and offices were an obvious target, as they were involved in warship production. In the moorings, three ships were sunk, and five others were damaged in the attack on Musgrave Yard and Dufferin dock.
By 2.30pm, the entire docks district was ablaze. The Abercorn Yard, Queen's Works, Clarence Works, Alexandria Works and Victoria Shipyard were devastated. Tragically, it was not only shipyards and steel works that suffered. In the Lower Newtownards Road area 25 people who were hiding in a shelter died as bombs levelled residential houses. The damage multiplied. The fires raging in Belfast were so enormous and widespread that they could be seen from the Glenshane Pass, which was 45 miles away.

By 4.30pm, 205 bombers had dropped 95,992 tons of incendiaries and 237 tons of high explosives onto the city. Six hours later, the city became engulfed in the sounds of sirens. On the ground, anti?aircraft guns were set up, and Hurricanes took to the skies to defend their beloved Belfast. The night skies were lit up by hundreds of flares as the crowds flocked to the safety of shelters and into the hills around Belfast. But the attack. continued at full force. High explosive bombs and parachute mines rained down on the city~ This time, the attacks were aimed at residential areas north of the city centre: New Lodge, Lower Shankill and Antrim Road. A further 76 land mines drifted slowly down from the sky in parachutes with the intent to tear apart the concrete and steel factories. More than half of these fell in residential areas. Over 130 homes were destroyed.

York Street Mill was literally sliced in two. As it collapsed it crushed 42 houses and damaged 21 others. Hundreds of terrified residents ran frantically down the Whitewell Road looking for shelter but found none. One hundred and seventy people were injured, forty six died. At midnight two parachute mines fell near Buncrana Road, Derry killing 15 people and leaving 150 homeless. At
1 am Newtownards Aerodrome was targeted. 10 guards were killed. 14 bombs hit Bangor killing 5 and injuring 35. Bombs continued to fall in Belfast. A shelter in Percy St was also hit, killing 30 people.

At 1.45 am a bomb exploded in the Central telephone exchange. Communication was completely wiped out and Belfast lost all contact with anti-aircraft operations control in the skies above.
Without the advice of the operations room, Belfast's anti-aircraft guns fell completely silent. They were unable to continue chasing German bombers for fear of hitting "friendly" Hurricanes, from the same side. Unknown to them, the Fighter Command had already withdrawn the Hurricanes.

The following two hours were heart wrenching. Luftwaffe attacks continued as Belfast defence forces remained silent. The city endured two solid hours of Luftwaffe, attacks without fighting back or being defended. The fires in Belfast city continued to rage unhampered. An estimated total of 140 fires began spreading into conflagrations. At 4.15am John McDermott: telephoned Sir Basil Brooke asking permission to request fire engines from the Republic once more, DeValera agreed. Two hours later, 70 men and 13 fire engines from Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Drogheda and Dundalk sped Northwards. The targets were more specific this time, so fatalities were fewer at 150. That was the final bombing raid on the North.

Years later, Eduard Hempel, the German Minister in Ireland said: "Strictly speaking, I think we could have protested, but we fully understood what you felt. Your own people were in danger. Nobody from Germany protested and I had no intention of so doing."

The Aftermath
Inevitably it was the ordinary working class family that suffered most in the attacks. One hundred thousand people were made homeless and nearly 1,000 people were killed, and 2,500 injured over the three nights. There was a heavy death?toll, and the material damaged involved works, stores, churches, halls, schools, shops, suburban villas, and humble homes. The air raids changed the face of Belfast and struck at the very heart of the people of Northern Ireland, uniting them as never before in their determination to face down a common enemy.
The story of the Belfast Blitz will live on for generations, as the story of the German bombings are told through survivors and their children. This article is written to help preserve the little glimmer of information that we have about the Republic's firefighters' defiant humanitarian act of bravery.