Lorna Siggins
Vivian Callaghan was bidding people farewell after a card game in the Bantry Bay Hotel in the early hours of January 8th, 1979, when he saw the flames.
"I knew it wasn't the time of year for gorse fires, and thought it rather strange. I was crossing the street when the first explosion occurred."
Only hours before, his hotel staff had met most of the French crew who were to lose their lives that night when the oil tanker Betelgeuse blew up while moored at Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay.
"We would have a lot of business with the Bantry Tanker Agency, and there was an arrangement that allowed crews to come over here and phone home," Mr Callaghan, Fianna Fáil councillor and current chair of Bantry Bay Harbour Commissioners, recalls.
"Most of them had been at sea over Christmas and New Year, and so an awful lot of them made those phone calls.
"It was doubly harrowing for my staff to know that the entire ship's complement of 43, including the wife of the French cook on board, died that night."
Seven local Gulf Oil workers also lost their lives, and a Dutch diving supervisor was killed during the salvage operation - bringing the toll to 51.
The 281-metre Betelgeuse had offloaded most of its 120,000 ton cargo, and still had about 40,000 tons on board, when an explosion ripped through its tanks, split it in two, and the flames spread to the jetty.
Flames were reported to have risen 600ft, every house in Bantry was shaken by the blast, and the intense heat and fumes over the initial 24 hours hampered the efforts of emergency crews to reach the remains.
Fortunately, although Whiddy Island's 61 inhabitants were evacuated, all 18 storage tanks on the island were unaffected.
Comdt Fergus O'Connor, formerly of the Air Corps and then working as a helicopter pilot with Marathon Petroleum on the Kinsale Gas Field, was airborne just over Cork Airport when he caught sight of the red glow 60 miles away. By this stage, Co Cork's emergency plan had been put into effect.
He and his crew picked up two Royal Navy Seaking helicopters en route and gave them local information.
"We had no rescue equipment on board, but when we flew over the scene we realised it wouldn't have been needed anyway," says Comdt O'Connor.
The ship was split in two, with its bow and stern sections protruding from the water next to the burning jetty. Awash with fuel, the sea was ablaze.
Anyone who might have survived the explosion had no hope of escaping the inferno.
Comdt O'Connor landed at the privately-owned Bantry airfield in complete darkness, relying on his local knowledge of the landing area, and guided in the two Royal Navy Seakings with torch signals. The helicopters then flew half-hourly runs, but most of the bodies were recovered by tugs, boats and divers.
The Naval Service's auxiliary ship LE Setanta, and two coastal minesweepers, LE Grainne and LE Fola, took turns to spray the oil as a Naval Service diving team carried out recovery missions.
"Throughout the day bodies were brought to the hangar at Bantry airfield," Comdt O'Connor says.
"There was an overwhelming smell of burning oil, and I could barely go in there. But I remember seeing the local priest and a local minister alone in there at one point, administering the last rites."
The full circumstances surrounding the disaster were to emerge during the subsequent tribunal held by Mr Justice Declan Costello, which found that most of the blame lay with the tanker's owner, Total, and with Gulf Oil, which ran the Whiddy terminal.
The Costello report said Total had failed to keep the vessel properly maintained even though it was aware that it was in a dangerous condition, and Gulf had failed to take adequate measures to ensure the safety of ships' crews and employees attached to the terminal.
Crucially, it also found that some of Gulf's senior management and staff had taken active steps to suppress information during the tribunal - including Gulf's dispatcher, who was not in the control room when the fire broke out.
A combination of inadequate hull maintenance and excessive stress on it due to incorrect ballasting caused the ship to buckle, causing the first fire in the ballast tanks at about 00.40 a.m. and at about 1.08 a.m. a massive explosion occurred.
The fire had already been noticed by local gardaí, who tried to telephone Gulf control and were told that all lines were busy.
The tribunal established that there had been attempts to extinguish the initial blaze, and a warning had been given over the ship's radio that the crew should abandon the vessel.
The president of Total confirmed that the Betelgeuse was not fitted with a safety "inert gas" system to prevent the explosion of combustible gas that can accumulate when oil is being discharged. The safety procedure had not been standard when the tanker was built in 1968.
The disaster influenced major changes in maritime safety legislation, and in March 1985 it was confirmed that final liability claims relating to the Betelgeuse had reached $120 million.