'We saw young people die right in front of us,' survivor tells Stardust inquest

A poster featuring the faces of all 48 victims hangs on the wall of the courtroom in the Rotunda Hospital where the Stardust Inquest is taking place. Photo: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

A Stardust survivor has given an emotional account of the trauma those present endured on the night, describing how “we saw terrible, terrible things that nobody should ever see” with young people dying “right in front of us”.

In a moving pen portrait of her friend Susan Morgan (19), who died in the fire, Yvonne Graham told the Stardust Inquest how she and Susie were part of a group of girls who moved from Derry to Dublin to work in the Nazareth House care home on the Malahide Road.

She said their lives in the capital were a “massive contrast” to Derry as they left a place in conflict and arrived in a city “buzzing with life and freedom”. However, she said that all changed on the night of February 13, 1981, when “our carefree life in Dublin was suddenly, brutally, cut short”.

Yvonne told how on the day after the fire, she and a companion went around the hospitals eventually ending up in the morgue where she recognised Susan’s clothes. “There was one shoe and the shirt she had been wearing — a shirt she had borrowed for the night from one of us — and her signet ring. I was in bits,” she told the Coroner’s Court on Tuesday.

Yvonne was providing the portrait of Susan as part of the inquest taking place at the Pillar Room in the Rotunda Hospital into the tragedy that occurred at the Stardust Ballroom in Artane in the early hours of February 14, 1981. The inquest into the fire, which claimed the lives of 48 young people, has now entered its second week.

Susie Morgan

Yvonne said Susie, as she was known, was raised by her granny and the two women “doted on each other”. She said when she and Susie moved to Dublin as part of a large group of girls, they lived in the Nazareth House care home where they worked and shared accommodation.

Susie was a tomboy who as “full of life” and loved football, playing on the A-team for Shantallow Football Club in her native Derry. The teenager was funny and loved practical jokes, Yvonne said, once waking her up shouting: “We’re late for work! We slept in”.

“As I was throwing water on my face and getting dressed, she was falling about, laughing, because it was still the middle of the night.” Susie loved Dublin and the “freedom and possibility” it represented, she said.

Susie noticed lots of little differences in the big city, like the number of people happily cycling around. “That’s not something that was common in places where movement was more restricted in the North”.

“She loved to feel the exciting atmosphere and the buzz of the city when we stepped off the bus onto the footpath in O’Connell Street,” Yvonne said, adding that Susie didn’t just love Dublin, she had also fallen in love with victim Paul Wade and was “mad on him”. “We were having a ball. I don’t think we stayed in even for one night,” she said.

Yvonne became emotional as she told how: 

On the night of the Stardust fire, we saw terrible, terrible, things that nobody should ever see. We were only young, and we saw other young people die right in front of us. 

"I was taken to the Mater hospital. The place was rammed. I remember everyone around me with big, black, burnt faces.” 

Yvonne said she didn’t know how she got home to Nazareth House the next day and told how the nuns gave her whiskey in tea “for shock” before she left again to find Susie in the morgue, recognised her by one shoe and a borrowed shirt.

She said that in the weeks following the fire: “There was blame. In the grief and loss, us girls were blamed for Susie being killed in the fire. We were blamed for taking her away from her home in Derry, for taking her away into danger.” Their carefree life in Dublin was suddenly, brutally, cut short, she said, and their families wanted them back in Derry.

Trauma

“You go from being young, free, and single, and then the whole lot has just collapsed down on top of you. We never spoke about the trauma. We blocked it out.” 

However, Yvonne told how it would resurface at night and how: “In nightmares, I saw burnt bodies coming up the bed at me. I had to take sedatives. I was only 18 and I was just sitting staring into space.” 

She said the effects of the fire have carried on through time and she is obsessive about pulling out plugs in the house, making sure there can’t be an electrical fire. “Even when I know I’ve already gone round the house and already checked that they’re disconnected, I have the compulsion to check them again”.

Yvonne said the trauma of the Stardust fire also has “a snowball effect, gathering up other lives that weren’t directly involved in it” and told how it has affected the lives of her children, even though they weren’t born at the time.

“They were never allowed a chip pan in the house. I stocked up on lots of microwaveable chips – anything and everything to make sure there won’t be a fire,” she said. “Everywhere I go, I’m always checking fire exits. The anxiety never leaves you.” 

She said St Valentine's Day is her youngest grandchild’s birthday but is also “a terrible time too”. She said that when the day comes around, instead of celebrating life, “we are plunged into terrible memories. Normality has been taken away”.

Yvonne said she hopes the new inquests will bring justice for people who have been waiting for so long.

“Susie was so young. She had her whole life in front of her. All of that – all the possibilities in the life ahead of her – were taken away from her in the Stardust fire. We should not have had to wait so long for justice,” she concluded.