Irish hurler turns hero in aftermath of quake
Donegal hurler Patrick McGowan, who is also the grandson of a senator, pulled free a young woman buried beneath a pile of rubble in a fallen building.
The 26-year-old, who only arrived in New Zealand a month ago, also put his shoulder beneath a steel bar to free a trapped man, but unfortunately he died.
Patrick, who moved to Christchurch after spending two years in Australia, is son of Donegal Fianna Fáil county councillor Patrick McGowan and grandson of the late Senator Paddy McGowan.
In addition to his rescue of the young woman, police in Christchurch also recruited him to direct people away from an Irish bar with leaking gas.
Patrick said yesterday he probably had a lucky escape from serious injury or death as he would have been working on high scaffolding during the earthquake but it was his day off.
He was in the city centre on the first floor in an internet café using Facebook when the earthquake struck. He said: “The next thing the building started shaking. I thought it was a bit of strong tremor. I was in shock.
“I stood under a doorway for a split second. Eventually I found myself going down the stairs from the first floor.
“I got to front door with a glass awning over it. I could hear things falling on the awning and people gathering behind me were trying to get out.
“We all made a decision to make a burst for it and we all ran out into the middle of the road. A few buildings came down on our street. We just stayed in the middle of the street for a while. We were standing there in shock.
“The pavement started coming away from the road. Drains started sinking. There were cracks in middle of road. It was really shocking at the start. It was a bit unbelievable for a while.”
Patrick thought of his friends in the city centre and he moved away in search of them but he only progressed past a couple of shops when he could see people in trouble.
He said: “I immediately ran in to try and help those people. I realised when I went in there was loads of people under where I was so we tried to clear the bricks away.
“We lifted up some steel. I knelt down on the ground and got my shoulder under a lump of steel and tried to lift it up. I was trying to wake a guy.
“There was a girl lying beside him and I could make sense of the girl. She was conscious. She was still half-buried.
“We eventually got all rubble off them and me and another guy pulled the man out who was unconscious.
“I kind of knew by the time when we had him out in the middle of the road that he was dead,” Patrick said, recalling all the life-saving skills he knew when he worked as a lifeguard at the pool in Jackson’s Hotel in Ballybofey as he started performing resuscitation on the man.
He said: “He was still warm when I was trying to revive him. I thought I could get a pulse but I think it was more my nerves that were making a pulse than the man himself.
“The guy, sadly, passed away. A doctor came and pronounced him dead. It was quite shocking.”
He and other helpers then cared for the young woman and then he saw a man climbing a ladder on to the same building.
Patrick said: “I was shouting at him to get down. We had an after-shock about 15 minutes after the initial earthquake and I was just shouting at him.
“He jumped down and the tremor started. Then he went back up again. He said there were people in there.
“He was just smashing the window through. It turned out he probably saved about 20 people then.
“They all came down the ladder,” said Patrick.
Patrick, who experienced another tremor as he was talking of his experience to his local Donegal radio station, Highland, said he put his own survival in the earthquake at about 50/50.
He said: “On each side of me both buildings came down. I was pretty lucky.”
He proceeded on up the city to the Irish Man bar where he had friends working.
It was closed but as he passed the bar he smelled gas.
He said: “I contacted a policeman to tell him about the gas and he told me to stay at the junction and stop people going down.
“I stayed there for up to 45 minutes until police came back again and they could secure the area itself.”
