TRAGIC baby Mary Connors showed no signs of life when she was pulled from a blazing portacabin in the Carrickmines halting site fire.
The inquest at the Dublin City Coroner’s Court has been hearing from first responders to the scene.

Fireman Ray Martin of Kill Avenue Fire Station told the hearing that they had received a call to go to a domestic fire at around 4.20am and when they had got to Cornelscourt Hill, they received an update that possibly several people were involved.

They pulled up outside the halting site and he immediately began laying down the hose. A man in his 30s began to assist him with the hose, saying: “You have to help them, please help them.”

Mr Martin said the radiant heat from the fire was ‘extremely intense.’

He was informed that there could be a baby in one of the cabins that was on fire, with ‘flames from top to bottom’. They attacked the fire at the door and a woman told him: “She’s in there, she’s on the bed.”

They ‘knocked back the flames,’ said Mr Martin , adding that there was ‘a lot of thick smoke and heat.’

He couldn’t see any flames as they entered the bedroom and he saw the baby lying on the bed, at the foot of the bed with the duvet turned over her.

He took the baby off the bed and brought her to the door, handing her over to a colleague.

“There was no obvious signs of life,” said Mr Martin. However there were burn marks on her face and on both forearms.

Mr Martin said the two fire tenders had the capacity to deliver 8,000 litres of water to the fire and they had used around 475 litres a minutes. This would fight a fire for approximately eight to ten minutes but after that they would need a further source of water.

Asked by Dublin City Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane if it had been a ‘snatch rescue rather than a fire extinguishing operation,’ Mr Martin agreed.

He had needed to wear his breathing apparatus because the atmosphere in the portacabin was ‘unable to support life,’ he said.

He had seen fire gasses above his head but no visible flames in the bedroom where the baby was.

“When we went in, it was extreme heat,” he said.

He had seen the baby as soon as he went into the bedroom. His first impression when he picked her up was that there was no signs of obvious life,’ he said. “He eyes were closed and I saw no movement of her chest. I didn’t check for a pulse because my priority was to take her out of the atmosphere,” he said.

Garda Robert Whitty told the inquest that baby Mary was pronounced dead in Tallaght Hospital at 5:31am.

Paramedic Catriona Sheehan said when she arrived at the scene, she was directed to a child who had been placed in the seat of a fire truck just seconds before her arrival.

She said the child was struggling to breathe and she tried to open up the airways but his jaws were locked.

Ms Sheeran said she continued to work on the child in the ambulance with a defibrillator and ventilator.

The child was four year old Tom Connors, who survived the fire.

She said she had been met by the 15 year old youth who had  saved the boy from the fire. HE was “hysterical” and saying that he had tried to lift a man out but he was too heavy.

Paramedic Rebecca Mooney told the hearing that a fireman had handed her a baby, whom she placed at the bottom on a stretcher along with her brother.

She had removed the baby’s clothes because they were wet though the child was ‘very hot’, and she noted that there was soot around her nose and mouth.

“The baby was in cardiac arrest,” she said.

She informed her control that they had two patients, one in cardiac arrest and one in respiratory arrest and they were taken to the A&E at Tallaght hospital.

In a deposition, Garda Barry Cormack of Cabinteely garda station informed the inquest that when he arrived at the scene, the residents were ‘understandably highly agitated’ and that Kathleen Connors was shouting that the baby was still in the cabin.

He and garda Tino O’Neill had spoken to Kathleen in an attempt to comfort her. She was in a state of shock, he said.

He witnessed the  baby being removed from the blaze and spent the next few hours there with the survivors.

The inquest continues.

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