Twelve adults and a three-month- old infant were rescued from a fire at an apartment building in Waterford city yesterday.
Gardaí and two units from the Waterford City Fire Service received reports at about 5.45am of a fire in the building on O'Connell Street in the city centre.
The building, which has eight apartments, is next door to Haricot's restaurant and houses 13 people - believed to be mostly young, foreign nationals in their 20s and 30s. Vasco Cordeiro (25), from Albufeira in Portugal's Algarve, rescued the infant after he had escaped from his first-floor apartment. He had arrived home from working in a late-night bar in the city centre.
Mr Cordeiro, who came to Waterford about 18 months ago, jumped about three metres from his apartment window into the back yard of Haricot's restaurant.
Clarissa McCormack (22), originally from Clonmel, Co Tipperary, was in bed when smoke billowed underneath the bedroom door. Her 14-week-old son, Hayden, was with her.
Ms McCormack said she thought she and Hayden would die in the thick black smoke. She paid tribute to Mr Cordeiro. "I was in the flat and I heard banging on the window. I woke up and saw Vasco outside. He was saying that the place was on fire and to get out," she said.
"I passed the baby to him - he saved us. I got out through a tiny window, I don't know how I got out."
Mr Cordeiro said after he arrived home from work at 3.30am, he heard an alarm and opened the door. "I could see nothing because there was too much smoke but I could hear the roar of the flames."
He threw his eight-month old cat, Simba, from the window and jumped on to the ground below.
He woke the other neighbours before taking the infant to a safe area. He tried to break down the restaurant back door but failed.
"I tried to break down the door with this [a gas cylinder] but I couldn't," he added.
He found a ladder in the laneway and placed it against the restaurant's washroom. "I took the baby up the stepladder and on to the roof. Everyone living at the back of the building eventually got out."
Two units of the fire service arrived on the scene and put out the fire in the hallway on the ground floor of the building in less than three minutes.
A HSE spokesman said that three adults and an infant were treated at the accident and emergency department of Waterford Regional Hospital yesterday. "All four were subsequently released after being treated for injuries sustained in the fire."
Gardaí sealed off the scene yesterday and have launched an investigation into its cause.
Teams of firefighters with breathing apparatus rescued the occupants by ladder from the front of the building and down a fire escape at the back.
Niall Curtin, chief fire officer with the Waterford City Fire Service, said the cause was not yet known but that it seemed to have started in the hallway.