People who were in the queue at the Tayto Park "House of Horrors" when a stairwell collapsed on Saturday night have spoke of the panic, confusion and fear which spread through the crowd in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
The lower portion of a permanent staircase to the attraction at the theme park in Ashbourne, Co Meath collapsed as people waited in line at an after-dark Halloween event.
Nine people required hospital treatment after the incident but all nine had been discharged by early on Sunday afternoon.
Rian O’Kelly (25), her 13-year-old sister and two of her sister’s friends had been queuing for the best part of an hour to get into the “House of Horrors” and were close to the entrance when the steps they had been standing on seconds earlier simply disappeared.
“We heard this big creaking noise and we thought it was part of the show, like trying to be scary, but then, next of all, people directly behind us just suddenly dropped and the whole staircase collapsed,” she said.
“Obviously everyone got really afraid and everyone started crying and screaming and stuff and running because we thought we were going to drop down as well, because we had just stepped off that staircase and everyone behind us just had gone.”
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday News programme, Ms O’Kelly described the situation was “surreal” and said that there was widespread panic in the moments after the stairwell collapsed as people scrambled to safety.
“All the young children and the adults even were screaming. It really was scary and quite ironic, that we were supposed to be going into a house of horrors,” she said.
15-year-old Beth Doyle was in the queue not far behind O’Kelly and the first inkling she had that something had happened was when she saw distressed looking customers talking animatedly to Tayto Park staff.
“Then a lot of other staff came rushing into the house and we heard that a stairwell had collapsed. There wasn’t really a sense of panic, at least not where I was standing. People were mostly just confused.
The Health and Safety Authority is investigating the incident.
In a statement on Sunday morning, the theme park said their emergency plan was immediately put in place and that nine people were taken to hospital as a precautionary measure to assess their injuries.
Management at the theme park will co-operate fully with the investigation, it said. The theme park opened as normal on Sunday.