TWO MEN and a woman were in a serious condition in hospital yesterday after being pulled from a fire in an underground car park in Dublin.
Firemen took three hours to control the outbreak at Smithfield Gate apartment complex early yesterday morning. Six fire units and five ambulances attended the scene after being notified of the fire at 5.25am.
The three people found in the underground car park are in their 30s and are understood to have been sleeping rough. They were being treated for severe burns at St James's Hospital, where a spokeswoman said they were all in a serious condition.
A mother and her child were also taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, and 25 people were evacuated from their homes while the emergency services fought the blaze.
Colin Reynolds, a student who lives on the second floor of the building, said the alarm sounded at about 5.30am, but he and his two flatmates could not leave the building because of thick smoke.
"It was too smoky to get downstairs - it was too thick and it was coming up the stairs. You couldn't see anything. So we headed for the roof. It was pretty worrying. We didn't know was there a fire escape up to the roof or not . . . In the space of a few minutes, the whole place filled with smoke. The smoke was just crazy."
With a thick pall covering the roof, however, Mr Reynolds and his friends returned to another resident's room and pushed towels against the door. "There were 12-14 people in this one apartment and we waited there for about an hour and a half."
Mr Reynolds said he didn't know the injured people. "We saw one guy being carted into an ambulance. It was hard to see, but he looked out cold. I don't know how they got down there."
The electricity and water supplies to the building were lost in the fire, and residents had been given alternative accommodation in a nearby hotel yesterday.
The outer walls of the building were badly marked by smoke, and a Spar shop on the ground floor was forced to close due to the extensive damage.
Owner Brian McCreesh said damage to the interior meant he would lose some €200,000 worth of stock and would be forced to close the shop for at least a week.
"We're devastated. It's very sad that that would happen to anyone, and the financial damage is nothing compared to that."
A Garda spokesman said an investigation into the fire was continuing.
