Irish Examiner view: When death comes out of nowhere

Creeslough tragedy

A garda brings flowers to the scene of an explosion at Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal, where ten people were killed. 

With the tragedy at Creeslough, which has taken the lives of 10 people, it fell to Bishop of Raphoe Alan McGuckian, lighting a red candle for each of the victims, to attempt to sum up the inexplicable, often irreconcilable, feelings that such disasters bring.

“A word that I heard just stuck with me,” he said. “One person used it, but it was about what had happened. They said it is so... random. It could happen to anybody. There is, I suppose, almost a sinister thing about the word ‘random’.”