Asylum seekers left homeless after hostel fire

ELEVEN children and their mothers were being cared for in temporary accommodation last night after a television left on top of a cooker set their hostel on fire.

The 22 asylum seekers were saved by smoke alarms, which woke them from their sleep at the Oakley Lodge hostel in Ranelagh, south Dublin, in the early hours of yesterday morning.

A fast-acting caretaker managed to keep the blaze under control with a domestic fire extinguisher and begin evacuating the families until two units of the Dublin Fire Brigade and an ambulance arrived on the scene.

The shocked group, most of whom are from African countries, spent the remainder of the night at Tallaght Hospital where they were taken for check-ups but none had injuries requiring treatment.

A kitchen and adjoining bathroom in the hostel suffered blaze damage, however, and much of the rest of the two-storey building was affected by smoke in the incident which happened shortly after 1.30am.

Tenants in an adjoining building which used to be part of the hostel premises were woken by fire crews who evacuated them from their flats before breaking through a first floor partition to reach frightened asylum seekers on the other side.

Niall Fleming had just finished helping two friends move into one of the flats and had settled down for the night when he heard the commotion. “I thought there was a party on next door but then I heard people talking into radios and I realised it was the guards or some other emergency crew. We had no idea there were all these children next door. We thought it was just more flats.”

One of the first visitors to the scene later in the morning was near neighbour, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, who was shown around the damaged area by the resident caretaker.

Mr McDowell said afterwards a simple mistake had caused the fire after a child carried a portable television into the kitchen and left it on top of a cooker where it began to smoulder before catching fire.

“There are fire alarms and fire extinguishers and all the emergency procedures worked very well. I think everyone is happy that things were handled in an orderly way and I think that shows in the fact there were no injuries,” he said.

Officials from the East Coast Area Health Board, which has a lease on the premises, inspected the damage mid-morning before taking the decision to find alternative accommodation for the women and children.

A spokeswoman anticipated no difficulties finding a temporary home and said repairs and redecoration would be carried out at Oakley Lodge before the group would be moved back in a week to 10 days’ time.

The spokeswoman added the board was satisfied with the way the incident was handled but said it was too early to put a figure on the cost of the damage to the property.

The group are among about 5,000 asylum seekers currently staying in 60 accommodation centres countrywide while they wait for their asylum applications to be processed.