A FATHER and son died in a fire at their home in Co Clare in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The men have been named locally as James “Mossy” Quinn, who was in his mid-60s, and his son James jnr, known as Jimmy, who is believed to have celebrated his 30th birthday earlier this month.
James snr was widowed some years ago while Jimmy was single. Mr Quinn was an uncle of former Clare senior inter-county hurler Gerry Quinn from nearby Corofin.
The alarm was raised at about 7.15am when emergency services were alerted to a blaze at the farmhouse at Kiltacky More, about a mile from the tiny village of Boston, in the north of the county. A neighbour had reported the blaze.
Five units of the fire brigade from Ennis in Clare and Gort, Co Galway, came to the scene where they discovered that the two-storey house was “well alight” and that the roof of the dwelling had already collapsed.
Emergency medical services were also sent from Ennis.
Just before 9am, fire personnel found the body of a man in an upstairs bedroom. A short time later, the body of a second man was found on the lower floor.
Members of the Clare divisional crime scene investigation team visited the scene early on Saturday, but their examination of the house had to be postponed until yesterday when the smouldering building had cooled sufficiently. As a result, the scene was sealed off and preserved overnight on Saturday.
The bodies were taken to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick where the process of formally identifying the victims and postmortem examinations began.
When Garda forensic experts examined the scene yesterday, their investigation centred on a stove which may prove to have been the cause of the fire. It is thought that the fire started accidentally.
One local said: “This is unbelievable. I just can’t get my head around it it all. I don’t go down that road often, but everyone around here knows the Quinns. I think one of the girls only moved to Australia recently. It is awful sad and just so hard to take in. I still can’t believe it.”
Mr Quinn snr is survived by daughters Áine, Mairéad and Bríd and sons Damien, Enda and Eoin. Two of the Quinn sons built houses close to the family home.
Saturday’s tragedy was the first fatal house fire in Clare for 2½ years.
In March 2008, two pensioners died in fires within a week of each other. It later emerged that the man and woman were first cousins.
In July of the same year, an elderly woman died in a fire at her home in Meelick, Co Clare.