Six units of Cork City Fire Brigade are tonight battling a blaze which is threatening to destroy the former StKevins block in Our Lady's Mental Hospital on the Lee Road in Cork city.
Units of Cork City Fire Brigade from Anglesea Street and Ballyvolane were joined by a unit of the Cork County Fire Service from Mallow in battling the blaze at the 19th century building.
According to the Fire Control Centre, the alarm was raised at 8.16pm and four units of the fire brigade sped to the scene of the fire at the building which is owned by the HSE but is unoccupied.
Smoke and flames could be seen ripping through the roof of the four storey high red bricked building, making the task of containing and controlling the fire difficult for fire fighters.
The blaze is the second at the building in the space of four years and follows a similar blaze in 2013 which caused damage to St Anne’s and some other units at the complex.
The main Our Lady’s Hospital closed in the early 1990s along with St Bridget’s and subsequently sold by the former Southern Health Board to developers who converted them into apartments.
St Kevin’s, St Dympna and St John’s closed between 2001 and 2009 as the HSE developed a more community based approach to mental health issues.
Local Sinn Fein Cllr Mick Nugent lamented the most recent fire at St Anne's and urged the HSE to ensure that unoccupied buildings on the Our Lady's campus are made secure.
“The damage to the building has still to be assessed but it’s regrettable that yet another iconic Victorian building in Cork has been damaged in this way - it’s very sad, “he said.
"We already had the nearby Good Shepherd Convent destroyed by fire some years ago and now for St Kevin's to be damaged as well by fire is very upsetting for the local community.
“The HSE should find some use for these buildings or at least ensure that they are made secure - for Cork to lose another historic building like this would be a terrible shame.”
It’s expected that garda technical experts will carry out a forensic examination of the building to try and establish the cause of the blaze once it has been declared safe to do so by the fire service.
