Ceremonies remember loved ones killed in oil disaster

A WOMAN who lost both her parents when the oil tanker Betelgeuse blew up in Bantry harbour spoke publicly for the first time about her family’s grief yesterday — exactly 30 years after Ireland’s biggest peacetime maritime disaster.

Marylene Lasalle was 22-years-old and five months pregnant when she heard the tragic news at her home in France.

Her father, Louis, 54, had been a baker on the French oil tanker that exploded at the Whiddy Island terminal in the early hours of January 8, 1979.