'It's been a dark place:' Waterford businesses 'in limbo' after Tycor centre fire
It looked like Armageddon. For some, it probably felt like it.
As plumes of black smoke billowed over the skyline of the Azzurri Walsh Park as Waterford hosted Cork in the Munster SHC, there was initial confusion over its root cause.
Soon it became clear the fire was stemming from the Tycor Business Centre just streets away, colloquially known as the old Jute Factory.
In the hours that followed, the full extent of the damage came to light.
What had begun as a small fire in the centre of the complex had soon crescendoed into a mass blaze as flames roared into the sky and spat out dust particles from the asbestos-insulated roof.
The centre housed around 50 units and supported the jobs of more than 200 people. For some, the electrics in their premises may have been damaged. For others, all their assets, from cars to instruments to food pallets, were burnt and left beyond repair.
Three months after the fire, many of those 200 people affected are questioning if it will ever be possible to build back from the ashes.
“We're all left in limbo,” says Blánaid MacCann, the owner of costume design company NoMac Productions.
For almost 40 years, she had been building NoMac, designing costumes used in theatre sets across the country. In the space of hours, thousands of costumes and a lifetime of work were eviscerated by the fire.
By her own admission, she is close to retirement age. Finding the willpower, as well as the finances, to rebuild her company and pass it over to the next generation has been gruelling.
“Rental is crazy money if you can get it,” she says. “I've been in every nook and cranny, every estate, and saying: ‘Who owns this place, and can you give me a number for them?’ and whatever. There isn't a matchbox available.”
State bodies were initially quick to act in the wake of the fire.
Within 72 hours, the business owners and social enterprises that comprised the old Jute Factory were convened in a closed-door meeting at the Tower Hotel in Waterford City.
Enterprise minister Peter Burke, representatives from Waterford City and County Council, and Sean Johnstone, CEO of Causeway Group — the property developer that owns most of Tycor — all spoke at the meeting.
A pot of €750,000 was to be administered for the group affected by the fire. A payment of €5,000 was to be handed out ex gratia, while further supports of up to €25,000 would be doled out on a case-by-case basis, pending independent financial assessments.
Mr Burke said the key was in assessing the need of each group — some may have been insured, others uninsured.
Some may have lost everything in the fire, others could’ve only incurred material damage.
“If I got that €25,000 next week or the week after, a lot of my problems would be solved,” says Peter Hurley, owner of MotorDent mechanics.
“They're looking for receipts for tools we got 10 years ago. How is that possible? They're making everything very difficult for us.”
Mr Hurley is one of the few businesses that have been able to secure permanent premises to operate out of following the fire, and is now located in Poleberry in Waterford City.
Many continue to scramble for properties, and say they’ve encountered evidence of price gouging in the aftermath of the blaze.
Paul Hearne, owner of Celtic Warrior Martial Arts, has found temporary access in a primary school, but now must attempt to squeeze a full week of business into the two days he has access to the premises.
“We all need to just put this behind us and start moving forwards, but there just seems to be an awful lot of obstacles being put in our way,” he says.
Elsadig Abdelnour, who ran a Sudanese Community Centre at the building, previously paid €450 a month for access to a unit at Tycor.
Waterford City and County Council has since offered premises on the Tramore Road with limited hours for €950 a month.
Mr Abdelnour says such a price would be impossible to sustain with the limited hours on offer.
Bill Deevey, who owns DVF Print & Graphic Solutions, has been forced to move to Tramore, a switch which he says has proved harmful to business.
“The challenges that we're facing are probably the biggest I've ever faced in my career in terms of steering a business through two recessions and a pandemic… It's been a dark place for the last three months,” he says.
Elenor Upton, who runs the Waterford Centre of Music with her sister Jean, has still been unable to find a place to recover, and coffers are squeezed despite substantial fundraising.
Like many, she has been unable to access her premises since the fire.
“There's sentimental stuff in this," she says. "Our mom passed away six years ago. There's a lot of stuff belonging to her in there. So even if we could salvage one or two things...”
Many are unable to claim insurance as they still cannot access their premises to get assessors in for inspection.
Causeway Group did not respond to queries on the progress of any clean-up operation taking place, and when companies affected by the fire may be able to access their units.
The business centre remains in a skeletal state.
While at ground level the units appear to be scarred, but not badly damaged, drone footage showed the fire ripping through the joint roofing. No remedial work has taken place since the immediate aftermath of the fire.
Yet a few units remain virtually untouched. Paradoxically, those tenants say they’re some of the hardest hit by the fire.
The owners are still unable to operate out of their premises due to public safety concerns surrounding the presence of asbestos that spread from the roof’s insulation.
They have been excluded from the support scheme as their properties were not directly damaged by the fire.
“I was assigned a mentor, a lovely lady who we know each other's businesses going back a while,” says Caroline O’Toole, the owner of sewing company Speak in Stitches. "We met a couple of times, and we filled in the application… She was convinced that I would definitely be entitled to at least the €5,000, if not more.
Ms O’Toole said her mentor ended up receiving more money for participating in the mentorship scheme than she did from the damage of the fire.
Now based in the Crystal Sports Centre on the outskirts of the city, she is paying double the rates that she paid in Tycor.
Darragh Price is the CEO of the International School of English, which has operations in Dublin and Waterford. Like Ms O’Toole, he has been unable to claim any State support for the fire, despite saying that the closure will likely spell the end of ISE’s operations in Waterford.
“We bring about 500 students to Waterford every year,” he says.
“We have a very reasonable contribution to the local tourism economy in Waterford, but it feels like with the reception we've gotten since the fire, that that doesn't matter.
“We need a premises that has educational planning permission, which is already few and far between. But we need about 10 classrooms plus office space contained in one building, which there just doesn't seem to be.”
Those experiences are mirrored by David Wilson, who’s part of the Waterford Christian Assembly, an evangelical prayer group. Mr Wilson says his applications for financial support were denied.
“They said that our unit was not actually damaged by the fire, and so they say that we're not entitled to that [support]…We only actually got into our unit probably two weeks ago, and we have now moved all of our stuff out,” he says.
“So there were a few things that we had to buy again in order to keep functioning. So they've given us a few hundred euro to cover some of that.”
He says that before entering his premises, Causeway Group asked him to sign a waiver in respect of potential health issues that could arise from the presence of asbestos.
Mr Wilson said the group paid privately for air testing and cleaning to ensure the premises were safe to enter.
Causeway Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Sources at the meeting in the Tower Hotel said they were under the impression that no affected owner would be forced to pay for asbestos testing for their premises.
The Department of Enterprise did not directly respond to queries on why businesses that did not have property damaged by the fire received no financial compensation.
Waterford City and County Council economic development officer Gareth Evans said payments made to the businesses would be processed as soon as possible.
“It’s very much down to getting information from the businesses and the loss adjuster, claims assessor… once they’ve got the information and process it, it will be fairly quick,” he said.
“A lot of people do have the board stuff, and they've got the invoices digitally. Then there's also people who've got photos as supporting evidence of that within situ, and then obviously there's photos following the incident.”
For the immediate term, many businesses feel they're left in purgatory and powerless to what comes next.
Many compared the flames that engulfed Tycor to the great industrial tragedies that hit Waterford, such as the permanent closure of the Waterford Crystal site in 2009.
An emblem of Waterford’s industrial history, the jute factory used to produce the long, coarse, twine-like fibre made to create durable sacks and sandbags. That too had its days, with operations shuttering in 1974 after 40 years in business. The current occupants can now only hope they won’t suffer the same fate.
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