A local resident who lived close to the Stardust nightclub has told an inquest he saw the fire from his bedroom window almost half an hour before the alarm was first raised in the club.
Noel Scully, who lived within 650 metres of the Stardust complex, said he heard noises “like fireworks” at 1.15am and when he looked out his bedroom window he could see an “orange glow” coming from the direction of the club.
Mr Scully is one of the first witnesses who observed the fire from outside the club to give evidence at the inquest.
The jury at Dublin District Coroner’s Court heard Mr Scully lived with his wife in Kilmore Close in Artane at the time of the fatal blaze.
He told Mark Tottenham BL, a member of the coroner’s legal team, that they had gone to bed at around 1am and 15 minutes later heard a noise which caused him to look out the window.
City lights
He said when he opened the blinds, he could see a glow which looked “almost like city lights from a distance” coming from the direction of the complex.
He said he got dressed and left his house at 1.20am, driving in the direction of the Stardust.
Mr Scully said it took him about five minutes to drive to the club and when he got there, he saw one young man walking on the footpath near the entrance of the Stardust.
He said the man looked “extremely odd” as his face and clothes were black. Mr Scully said the man was walking towards Beaumont, and he tried to persuade him to wait for an ambulance.
“I put my arm around him and his coat broke,” said Mr Scully. “He slipped down and some of his hair broke off. I assisted him back to the ambulances that had then started to arrive.”
The witness said the man did not identify himself. Mr Scully said he asked a detective months later about the young man he had assisted and was told that he had died.
However, he agreed with lawyers at the tribunal that there was a lot of confusion on the night and that it was possible there may have been “some crossed wires” with the guards in relation to this.
Mr Scully said he remained at the scene of the fire for about an hour assisting people in the area.
He said he heard screaming coming from the toilets as people couldn’t get out because of the bars on the window. He said the people weren’t screaming in pain but rather “screaming in panic”.
Exact time
Asked about the exact time he first saw the fire and the time he left the house, Mr Scully said the time he had given of leaving the house at 1.20am was “absolutely accurate” as he was working off the clock in his home and this “kept pretty good time”.
“What’s going through my head is that I saw the fire before 1.30am, that’s what got me out of bed so the fire had started quite definitely before 1.30am,” he said. “Whether the people inside found that out or not, it quite definitely started before 1.30am.”
The inquest has heard evidence from numerous witnesses in the club on the night who said the fire was first noticed inside the complex at around 1.40am.
Mr Scully agreed with Sean Guerin SC, representing a number of the families of the deceased, that the back of his house had faced the Stardust club, and it was from a bedroom window here that he first spotted the fire. He confirmed that it did appear that the person he met was one of the first out of the building.
Evidence was also heard today from Gabriel O’Neill, who gave his evidence remotely.
Mr O’Neill had been employed at the Stardust club for about a month before the fatal blaze and had worked a total of ten nights at the time of the fire. The jury heard he used the name Gerard Hughes while he was employed as a doorman at the club.
Main door locked
Mr O’Neill said he worked at the main door of the club. He said the door was locked, and another doorman had the key in his possession.
In his statements to gardaí in 1981, which were read into the record today, Mr O’Neill initially said that when he heard about the fire, he went to exit five, and it was “free and easy to open it”.
However, he later said his reference to opening exit five was “not correct”. Mr O’Neill said that when he went to the door, he saw this exit was locked, and he tried and failed to open it. He said he then went to exit number four which was open. He said he felt “guilty” that he could not open exit five.
Mr O’Neill told gardaí the premises was black with smoke, and it was hard to breath. He said he tried to direct the crowds out of exit number four, but people were screaming, and he could not see them because of the smoke.
Mr O’Neill also told gardaí that he saw a girl inside lying on her back who was burning, but he could not get in because of the flames and the heat.
The former doorman told Mr Tottenham that he had never been involved in the locking or unlocking of the doors. He said he was not involved in the practice of draping chains on fire exit doors [to make them appear locked] and had not been told about this policy before the night of the fire.
Recollection
Asked why he had initially told gardaí that exit five was free and easy to open, Mr O’Neill said he had breathed in quite a lot of fumes in the fire and his recollection of events was “not very clear”.
He said he also felt guilty that he may have failed to open a door that “possibly could have been opened” and “possibly could have been used by people”.
Asked if he was sure that the door was locked, Mr O’Neill said when he went to the door and saw the chains draped around it, he was “quite shocked” to see it. He said if he’d known about the draping of the chains on the exits, he might have “made a better job of that”.
The garda statements of John Fitzsimons, a doorman in the club at the time of the fire, were read into the record today.
In his statements to gardaí following the fire, Mr Fitzsimons, who also worked as a fireman, said when he realised the blaze had taken hold, he called the fire brigade and told the officer in charge that there was a fire and that it was a “district call”. He said a district call means “an all out emergency with life involved”.
The doorman said as he was standing inside the main entrance and was ushering people out, but it became difficult as they were all rushing in different directions. He said he ended up “throwing and dragging” people out physically.
Mr Fitzsimons said he was overcome with smoke and had to make his way out of the building. He said he informed officers outside that there were still people in the building, and they succeeded in rescuing about 13 people from the toilets.
The doorman also told gardaí that on nights disco dances were on, it was expected that exits four, five and six would be locked with a chain and padlock. He said this was done to stop “troublemakers” from forcing their way in.
He said he complained to deputy head doorman Leo Doyle that there were not enough staff to cover the crowd and told gardaí that on one occasion there had only been five doormen to cover about 750 people.
“I felt that it was unsatisfactory to ever lock the doors, and we should have enough staff to cover all the doors,” he said.
Mr Fitzsimons said on two occasions he had been given keys and told to unlock the doors and had draped the chains over the doors to give the impression that they were locked.
He told gardaí that on the night of the fire, he heard head doorman Tom Kennan say at around 4am that he had opened the doors. He said this had struck him as strange as he had never seen him open them.
Mr Fitzsimons said he was asked to go to the Stardust at 2pm on February 14, 1981 and about 20 staff members attended and made statements to a solicitor. He said while he was there, he did not hear anyone speaking about how the fire started or whether the doors were locked or not.
He said on Monday, February 16th he met Leo Doyle, and they discussed the rumours going around about the doormen.
Mr Fitzsimons also told gardaí that PJ Murphy had called to his house and told him that doorman Michael Kavanagh had said he didn’t open the doors.
