Birdsong and the heavy thud of a digger are the only sounds to be heard entering Creeslough village on Saturday morning.
Like a picture postcard lying under the shadow of Mount Muckish, residents watch in silence from beyond a Garda cordon as emergency workers walk with bowed heads from the shell of the Co Donegal service station where a recovery operation continues.
As a little girl throws a teddy bear in the air, word filters through that the death toll from Friday afternoon’s explosion has reached 10 – and includes a young child.
“It’s the first time in my life I’ve woken up in the morning feeling like I’m living in hell,” says Bernie Ferry. “We know everyone who’s gone. There are no words. It’s just how you feel for other people. It’s like it’s your own.”
Her daughter, Kerry Ferry, wipes away tears explaining she was en route to the Applegreen service station 10 minutes before the blast ripped through it shortly after 3pm.
Use the slider to see a before and after picture of the petrol station in Creeslough
She says the shop was the village hub where “everyone stopped for a yarn” with a post office and butcher’s in the same building.
“I was literally minutes away to get eggs for my Bobby, my 14-month-old. I was in it just 24 hours before at the same time – I have the receipt in my car for 3.15pm – where Bobby was playing with the balls out the front and we were laughing.
“I’m five months pregnant with my second child and I just keep thinking – what if I had been 10 minutes earlier?
“I’m an A&E nurse and you see everything but when this comes to your own door... there’s just darkness.”
Populated by just under 400 people, locals rushed to the scene within minutes of the explosion where they formed human chains to remove the debris.
Construction workers also brought specialist equipment to help the fire service.
The silence is eerie. We are in shock
Taking a smoke break on Saturday afternoon after working through the night in the rescue effort, a local man stands shaking his head. “This doesn’t happen in Ireland – and it certainly doesn’t happen in Donegal. I don’t know how we’ll ever get over this,” he says.
“We were here 10 minutes after the explosion, every construction contractor within a 10-mile radius turned up. There were four human chains with hundreds of men, we just kept going.”
Across the road and overlooking Sheephaven Bay is The Coffee Pod cafe which has remained open for 24 hours to provide free snacks, meals and tea. Emergency service teams, villagers and journalists throng the brightly coloured sandwich bar beside a glamping site as staff carry up trays of hot drinks to those still at the site.
Manager Siobhán Carr hasn’t slept. “The girls have worked through the night. We only opened our business a year and half ago, it’s a small community where we all know each other.
“Everybody is rallying round. There’s people coming in here with horrendous news and we’re just trying to help. It is heart breaking.”
Windows were blown out of a derelict house close to the station and a yellow cordon seals off shattered glass underfoot.
Next door a woman is offering cups of tea from a house that once belonged to her granny and is now an Air B&B.
Struggling to compose herself, she says the community is numb. “The silence is eerie. We are in shock. We opened as a tearoom for the emergency services last night,” she says.
By early afternoon, more residents arrive and a young woman sobs into the shoulders of a relative as the parish curate comforts locals.
“I think when we arrived on the scene yesterday, there was a sense of doing and a sense of numbness,” says Fr John Joe Duffy from St Michael’s Church. “But today that numbness began to wear off as the horror of it continues to unfold before our eyes.
“People are doing everything they can to respond, there has been so much generosity and that generosity has continued. Emergency services from the North came here and blended so well with the services of Donegal.
“There’s people from this community and people from abroad we’re continuing to support. Today our community’s heart is broken.”
Resident Eamonn McFadden lives half a kilometre away and says the blast couldn’t have happened at worse time.
“It was the busiest time of day for the shop. Our house shook with the force of it. I came down and it was just a devastating scene. There was debris everywhere, people working round the back.
“There was a nurse or two, we were just trying to clear access. At the start there was panic. When the fire brigade came in, it was clear they needed assistance to help clear the road. They wouldn’t have managed it on their own so we all starting helping by passing the bricks one to the other.
“The village only has around a few hundred people in it, it swells in the summer with tourists and people camping.
“But it’s just the local community that’s left. I’ve lived here all my life and everybody knows everybody. How we come to terms with this remains to be seen, it’s just devastating. It could have been any of us.”
