No house alarm where baby died

The absence of smoke alarms was noted at an inquest yesterday into the death of a 17-week-old baby in a house fire.

Deirdre McCarthy confirmed to Cork city coroner Dr Myra Cullinane that her parents' home at Rosewood Estate in Ballincollig, Co Cork, was not equipped with smoke alarms when a fire broke out there early on February 1st last.

Ms McCarthy told how she had put her baby, Sadbh McCarthy, to bed in a Moses basket just inside the door of her parents' bedroom at the front of the house at around midnight before going to bed in the back bedroom with her partner, Paul Griffin.

Her parents were away and she left on a bedside lamp at the other side of the bedroom from where Sadbh was sleeping.

She was awoken at around 5.10am by the smell of smoke and went into the bedroom to find a fire there.

Most of the black smoke was coming from the corner of the room where the lamp had been left on, with considerably less smoke near the door where Sadbh was in the basket but there was no sign of life in the little girl, said Ms McCarthy.

She told the inquest that she knew as she held the baby in her arms and carried her downstairs out of the house that the child was dead.

Mr Griffin told how he had tried to resuscitate the child outside as they waited for the emergency services who rushed Sadbh to Cork University Hospital, where doctors also tried to resuscitate her without success.

Garda technical examiner Det Garda Regina Donnelly said it appeared most likely that the fire was caused by the lamp and had been fuelled by books and furnishings in the bedroom.

The jury of five women and one man returned a verdict of accidental death. Dr Cullinane said inquests into the deaths of infants were the most tragic that she had to deal with and she extended her deepest sympathies to the McCarthy family.