16 gardens in Carlow town destroyed by ‘devastating’ fire

GARDAÍ have charged a man in his 30s following an incident of criminal damage by fire at noon last Monday, 24 August that damaged 16 properties at Willow Park, Carlow town.

“If this had happened at night, we could be dead,” said one resident, who did not wish to be named.

She was out in the garden with her nine-year-old son on Monday morning and heard a “crackling” sound coming from a field at the back of her garden. A tree was in flames two houses away.

By the time the woman, her son and 12-year-old daughter went outside the front of their house, the fire had spread across the dry grass in the field behind their house and set the fence at the bottom of their garden on fire.

They called the fire brigade but it took crews from Bagenalstown and Tullow fire brigades 30 minutes to arrive at the scene because the Carlow town team were attending another incident. In the meantime, two men living in the area started hosing down back gardens to prevent the fire from coming too close to the timber-framed homes. One of them had to attend hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.

The families, several with young children, could not return to their homes until 7pm that evening.

The scene they returned to was devastating.

All that remained of the “sanctuary” garden the parents had created for their son, who has Down Syndrome, was the burnt metal frames of a trampoline and sun lounger and the blue plastic of what was once a paddling pool.

They had spent over €20,000 on creating a garden paradise over the past five years. The husband had created a bar in the shed, using engraved whiskey barrels as stools and a custom-made countertop of 200-year-old wood. He had also stored a bike worth €1,400 in the shed.

Wooden fences surrounding each garden along the row were reduced to ash and trees blackened into charcoal. Vegetation, which had browned and dried by months of drought, lit up like a tinderbox. Without the boundary fences, the neighbours can walk from one back garden into another along the terrace of houses.

The resident believes the only thing that stopped the fire from consuming her home was the large patio they had laid outside their back door.

Though the flames didn’t touch the house, the heat from the blaze caused the glass in windows and doors along the row of houses to crack and their frames to warp. Vents melted completely on the wall of the house, allowing smoke to enter their home.

The family’s next-door neighbour said she was unable to sleep in the week since the incident, scared that the fire might start up again and because of the loss of security provided by the fences around the garden. “I’m a bag of nerves,” she told  The Nationalist.

“I looked out and I thought I was seeing things,” she said of her initial reaction to the fire.

Gardaí said they attended the scene at noon following a report of an incident of criminal damage by fire and that one person was taken to hospital for treatment.

A man aged in his 30s was later arrested by gardaí in connection with the incident. He has since been charged with criminal damage, appeared before Wexford District Court and was remanded in custody.

Wanting to start the clean-up process and re-create their gardens, the affected residents are waiting on inspections from insurance companies to deliver their claims.

“We can make it all nice again, but it’s never going to be the same,” the first woman said.

“We can’t just go down to Homesavers to replace the stuff. We had one-off custom furniture in the garden. We put so much time, money and effort into making it. I know this all can be replaced and I’m thankful we’re all still here, but the damage caused by the reckless, mindless behaviour of one individual,” said the woman. “It's devastating.” “My heart went out to all the residents who were just trying to build a home,” said cllr Paul Doogue after he visited the affected properties. “All the memories that were there for years have gone up in smoke.” The resident described the event as a trauma for her and her neighbours. And in a twist of fate, it has rained every day since the fire broke out.

The woman reached out to minister of state Jennifer Murnane O’Connor to see if Carlow County Council could help them deal with the fallout of the fire. “While we have considerable sympathy for the families affected by these incidents, direct engagement with the environment department at Carlow County Council would be unlikely to result in any meaningful outcome,” was the council's response.

It was suggested that the more relevant authorities would be those with legal responsibility for criminal enforcement, public order, and private property issues.

To cllr Doogue, the solution lies in the wider Carlow town community: “The neighbourhood needs to rally around them.”