Coroner calls for working group to improve fire safety for older people
An urgent call for a working group to improve fire safety for older citizens has been called for by a coroner following the deaths of a Cork couple in their home as they celebrated the birth of their first grandchild.
The working group should be established “as a priority” and should include local authorities, community healthcare, fire services, gardaí, and elderly care advocacy groups, deputy coroner for Cork City Mary McCaffrey said.
The group should examine strategies to educate older people about fire prevention and identify if grant aid should be provided to encourage people to install smoke alarms and carbon monoxide monitors in their homes, she said.
Those aged 65–75 have double the risk of fire injuries and deaths than the general population, US statistics for fire-related injuries and deaths show. For those aged 75-85, that risk is trebled. For those aged over 85, the risk quadruples.
Risk factors include reduced hearing, which means people do not hear the alarm. Medications such as sleeping pills can also affect a person’s response and balance. Age itself also affects response, Ms McCaffrey said. The risk of falls is also higher in these age cohorts.
Education events about fire safety could be held at places such as Men’s Sheds and daycare centres to target older age cohorts.
The recommendations come after an inquest into the deaths of John, 83, and Gabrielle ‘Gay’ O’Donnell, 75. Their house caught fire the night they celebrated the birth of their first grandchild.
Neighbours and family had celebrated with them a short time before a “ball of flame” engulfed their three-storey house, a tiled terraced home on Cork’s Lower Glanmire Rd near the city’s train station last April.
Mr O’Donnell had died of a heart attack before the fire started, while his wife had died of smoke inhalation, Cork Coroner’s Court heard on Thursday.
The fire in the O’Donnell’s period home appears to have taken hold very quickly, because CCTV showed Mrs O’Donnell’s brother leaving the house at 10.45pm and a couple walked past without noticing anything untoward in the house at 11.04pm.
However, by 11.09pm, passerby Alan Lyne noticed a “ball of flame” in the house.
The fire brigade arrived at 11.20pm, just 10 minutes after Mr Lyne called 999, but the building was completely gutted. Everything was so damaged that it was not possible to say where the seat of the fire was, Garda Orla Punch told Cork Coroner’s Court.
People who celebrated the birth of their grandchild with them that day said that there was a coal fire in the sitting room, where their bodies were later found. There was also a gas heater and some candles lighting on a glass table that evening.
The O’Donnell’s son, Mark O’Donnell, said that he spoke to his parents on the phone just two hours before they died.
His wife had delivered their first grandchild that day in Qatar, where Mr O’Donnell works. He said that there were multiple smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms in the house.
His parents had been conscious about fire safety and would always check that any candles were extinguished, he said.
“I was talking to them two hours before [the fire]. We had the new baby, they were happy,” he said.
Although his father was 83, he would walk around the nearby quays twice a day and his mother was also well and active and was “always pottering around”.
Ms McCaffrey urged people to buy presents of good smoke alarms for loved ones this Christmas.
