Stardust inquests: Witness says she could hear people screaming after exit doors were shut

A woman who escaped from the Stardust nightclub fire in 1981 said exit doors were shut after she got out to prevent people re-entering to try to find “brothers and sisters and friends”, while the screams and cries of people trapped inside could be heard.

Linda Bishop, who was 18 at the time of the disaster, told Dublin Coroner’s Court on Friday she was a regular patron of the north Dublin club. She was there on the night with several friends aged between 16 and 18.

Fresh inquests into the deaths of 48 people, aged 16-27, in the fire at the Stardust nightclub, Artane, in the early hours of 14th February, 1981, are being held following a 2019 direction by then attorney general Séamus Woulfe that they be opened.

Ms Bishop said the night was “bitterly cold” and it was also cold where she and her friends were sitting – near a partitioned area of seating known as the west alcove – in the venue. She and her friends had asked staff a number of times to turn up the heating.

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Her digital watch said 1.33am when she felt heat, possibly from behind the blinds in the west alcove. While dancing, a friend named Sandra, noticed a fire in the alcove.

“I turned around and saw a very small fire that looked like it could be brought under control... My first thought was ‘I’ll go to the loo while they put it out’... People weren’t panicking but suddenly people were panicking and running in all directions... The whole [alcove] area was ablaze... flames were rolling out towards dance floor. Everything just happened so quick.”

A friend dragged her towards the foyer as black smoke filled the area, making it difficult to breathe. “The ceiling over our head was on fire... I could hear [fire] crackling.”

Once in the foyer it felt like a “bottleneck” of people. “The lights went out. People were falling,” she said.

She told Brenda Campbell KC for the families of nine of the dead: “It was pitch dark and I had no sense where anything was. I remember my hip hit off stairs and I thought, ‘Right I know where I am. If I keep going, the door was that way, I will be able to get out’.”

The hall was “very densely packed and we just seemed to come to a pile. I thought it was coats. I hoped it was coats. We started to fall but knew if I fell I wouldn’t be able to get back up so I made sure I didn’t fall.”

She says she was “on the ground” outside before she realised she had made it out. She was brought across the driveway to a car, where she vomited. Not long after she saw the doors being closed from the outside.

“I realised they were trying to keep the people outside out that were trying to get back in... There were people looking for brothers and sisters and friends. People did run back inside... there was fellahs pulling people not to go back in, trying to keep them outside. It was mayhem.

“Do you know whether the doors were closed at a time when people were still inside?” asked Ms Campbell

“Oh absolutely. We could hear people screaming, we could hear people in the toilets crying.”

“Did that cause you concern at the time?”

“Oh absolutely.”

The fire brigade turned up after the doors were closed, and were trying to break toilet windows beside the main entrance. The inquests heard steel plates and iron bars had been welded to the frames of these windows six weeks before the fire.

“There were fellas trying to kick the windows in,” said Ms Bishop. “We could hear people inside screaming and banging.”

“Did they have any success in getting anybody out?,” asked Ms Campbell. “No.”

Ms Bishop said a “young guard” approached her and her friends and said: “You need to go home. You are only in the way.”

“We said, ‘We’ll go home if you promise to get everybody out’. He said: ‘Yes, I promise’,” she said.

The inquests resume on Tuesday.