Firefighters went to wrong address

TWO separate inquiries are under way into a mix-up that sent firefighters to the wrong address while the house at the centre of the emergency burned to the ground.

Members of the Kilkenny city fire brigade were horrified to discover after they rushed to a callout a week before Christmas that the actual blaze was 27km away.

By the time their colleagues from Thomastown and Callan stations, who should have been dispatched in the first place, were alerted, they had lost 28 minutes and the house was completely gutted.

The mishap happened on December 18, just weeks after the Kilkenny control centre was shut down and emergency calls began to be routed through Dublin.

Kilkenny’s chief fire officer, Ciaran Cormican, said the fire brigade received a call from the Dublin control centre to go to a house fire at Keatingstown, a townland on the outskirts of the city, when the actual fire was at Keatingstown, near Mullinavat, in the south county.

The fire broke out mid-morning and the occupants of the house escaped uninjured, but the building was completely destroyed.

“We need to find out what happened, why it happened and make sure to the best of our ability that it doesn’t happen again,” said Mr Cormican.

“Thankfully nobody was hurt but in other circumstances, the consequences could have been much worse. As it was, the people waiting for the fire brigade to arrive were very stressed, as were our colleagues in Thomastown and Callan, who had to deal with the understandable upset of the people when they arrived.”

Mr Cormican said an inquiry by Kilkenny Fire Brigade was almost complete and focused on whether sufficient information had been provided to Dublin prior to the hand-over of the control centre responsibilities to enable Dublin fire officers distinguish between similar addresses.

A spokesman for Dublin Fire Brigade confirmed that a separate inquiry was taking place into the information relayed by the control centre to Kilkenny.

Kilkenny’s control centre was shut down in November. All of Leinster, as well as Cavan and Monaghan, are now covered by the East Regional Control Centre, based in Dublin.

Mr Cormican said the move had been broadly welcomed as it improved the service in some counties where there had not been enough staff to man the phones full-time.