River deaths tragedy: Post mortems today

Post mortems will be held today for a mother and her young daughter whose bodies were recovered from a heavily-flooded Cork river.

An after-school trip to a birthday party ended in tragedy when the family’s four-wheel drive plunged into the Coomhola River near Bantry, Co Cork in treacherous weather conditions.

The mother, in her thirties and named locally as Orla O’Driscoll, of Derryduff, Coomhola, Bantry, tried but failed to free her daughter Muire when the vehcile left the road.

She managed to free her six-year-old son, Fionn, who escaped from the vehicle and ran to raise the alarm at a local shop.

A rescue operation, involving emergency fire crews, gardaí, the coastguard and locals, was hindered by the horrific weather.

The three-year-old girl was eventually found tangled in the undergrowth downstream and rushed to Bantry hospital, where she died a short time later.

Her mother was located shortly afterwards but had already died. The young boy was later said to be “shocked and traumatised” but safe.

Their vehicle was found semi-submerged around 100m downstream from where it left the road at around 3.30pm yesterday.

It later emerged the young family had only recently moved to the area.

They had been crossing a tributary of the River Coomhola close to their home when the car was swept into the water.

Locals from the small town of Bantry said the community had been plunged into deep shock.

Barman Jim O’Keeffe said: “My kids went to the same school as the young boy. It’s a very small school everybody knows each other.

I know the family had only been living here a while. They moved to the Borlin Valley just six or seven months ago. This is such a terrible tragedy and has hit everyone very hard.

“The worst thing is that a few tragedies have happened here involving kids and their parents in recent months. No one can believe it could happen again.”

A young woman who did not want to be named, said everyone had been glued to the news, trying to piece together what had happened.

“The poor little boy - he must be in bits,” she said. “We heard the ambulance and the fire sirens going up there and no one knew what was going on.

“We didn’t know what was happening. It’s awful. The whole town is in absolute shock. Everybody’s talking about how upsetting it is and how awful, especially for such a young family.”

She said the news had brought back terrible memories of other tragedies to have hit the area, not least as the anniversary of a similar accident was approaching.

“It’s dug up memories for a lot of people here,” she said. “You can tell by their faces – they just can’t believe it.”

Conditions at the time of the accident were extremely dangerous after several days of heavy rain.

Gardaí said the river had been turned into a “raging torrent”. A Bantry Inshore Search and Rescue Association spokesman said: “The weather here at the moment isn’t too bad. It’s the weather over the last few days that caused the problems.

“The rain was coming down off the hills and the river came out on to the road in a number of places.”

A coastguard helicopter flew from Shannon to assist, but later returned.

In January, the Coomhola River claimed the life of an eight-year-old boy.

His father, who was working on a turbine in the river, noticed he was missing and later found his body in the water.