Cigarette may have caused fatal fire

A DISCARDED cigarette may have started the house fire which claimed the life of a father-of-five in Cork yesterday.

The victim was named locally as Ben Burke, aged 55, who lived alone at 99 Roche’s Buildings in Blackpool, the upper terrace of an historic city council housing estate off Rathmore Road, above St Patrick’s Hill.

He was alone in the small house located at the end of the terrace when neighbours spotted smoke at about 4am yesterday.

Emergency services were alerted at 4.09am and four units of Cork City Fire Brigade responded.

They were on the scene within minutes but cars parked on either side of the narrow terrace prevented the fire tenders from getting down to the house.

However, a fire service spokesperson said this did not affect their ability to tackle the blaze. Fire crews ran their hoses from the tenders along the road down to the house, he said.

Two four-man firefighting teams wearing breathing apparatus entered the smoke-filled building to tackle the blaze, which is believed to have started downstairs.

They brought the fire under control quickly and prevented it from spreading to other homes.

They then searched the upstairs area of the house and found Mr Burke’s body in an attic bedroom.

It was removed from the building and despite desperate attempts by ambulance crews to resuscitate him on the road outside, he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The fire was confined to the downstairs of the house and gardaí believe Mr Burke may have been overcome by the smoke.

The remains were taken to Cork University Hospital where a post-mortem examination was carried out yesterday to establish the exact cause of death.

The scene was sealed off from 6am to allow garda technical experts examine the house to establish the cause of the blaze.

But a garda spokesman said they were treating the fire as accidental.

Mr Burke is originally from Dublin but he lived in Cork for most of his life. His death has shocked the tight-knit community in Roche’s Buildings.

Neighbour Teresa McCarthy knew him for years and said he was a good person who would be sorely missed.

“It is terrible because he was a very nice man and very quiet. You couldn’t say a bad word about him. He never interfered with anybody. I was very fond of him because I knew him all through the years. Only the downstairs was damaged but it was the smoke that caught him,” she said.

Tina Walsh said Mr Burke had a “heart of gold”.

“I’m distraught. He was supposed to call over to me this morning. It’s just so sad,” she said.