The man who died in an explosion in Roscommon had planned to adapt the house for his partner who is in a nursing home.
The man who was killed in the incident in Frenchpark on Wednesday evening has been named locally as Des Deegan (72), originally from Dublin. He moved into the house approximately a year ago to be close to his partner Alice Hetherton (63), formerly of Oldcastle, Co Meath, who is now in a nursing home.
It’s understood that the couple hoped to retire to Frenchpark, when Ms Hetherton suffered a bleed on her brain in 2023. Only six weeks ago he set up a GoFundMe to modify the house so his partner could live with him in the house in Frenchpark rather than in a nursing home.
The detached house in Frenchpark has now been reduced to a pile of rubble.
Around it in The Oaks estate are damaged roofs and broken glass. Almost 24 hours after the explosion, the smell of burning debris remains in the air.
Residents say the dreadful tragedy could have been so much worse. The explosion happened at 7.10pm when children would usually be out playing in the green in front of the house. The children who were out playing had left the area 10 minutes previously.
The explosion was so violent that it blew the window sills from Mr Deegan’s home all the way across the green and it hit the front windows of the house 50m away.
Sinéad Doran was getting her two children ready for bed when she heard the explosion. Looking at the broken glass that peppered her driveway, she said: “There was definitely a guardian angel looking after our family. It was the most horrific thing I ever witnessed in my whole life.
“It is the luck of God that the window did not come in on top of us. We thought it was our car that exploded. We couldn’t hear the bang. We could actually feel it. Our whole house shook.”
She said the horror of the explosion was compounded by the realisation that she had just seen Mr Deegan enter the house just minutes before.
Her partner Bernard Finlay raced across the road after he heard the explosion and called out if there was anybody there.
“I was thinking of him, but there were people screaming at me to get away. I was thinking of my kids. I needed to move away before things got worse,” he said.
It took firefighters four hours to release the remains of Mr Deegan from the rubble.
Parish priest Fr Michael Donnelly said local people are “numb with shock” about what happened and traumatised about how close the estate came to total catastrophe.
“Why the children weren’t there and the sun beating down nobody knows. There was someone looking over them. If the children were there when the house blew up, you are looking at multiple fatalities.”
A technical examination of the scene is continuing and investigations are ongoing.
