DUBLIN remains in mourning for the five young students from the city who lost their lives after a balcony plunged 40ft feet to the ground outside a Californian apartment complex.
Speaking in Italy, President Michael D Higgins yesterday said the “immense tragic impact” on the families of the five Dubliners and one Irish American killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning was almost too difficult to absorb.
The head of state said he hoped that the bereaved families would find the support they needed from friends, their communities and the state’s institutions to help them get through their ordeal.
The Republic’s Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan revealed that an emergency phoneline manned by officials in his department had received over 500 calls in the hours after news of the tragedy emerged on Tuesday as people desperately tried to find out if their loved ones were safe.
In a mark of respect to the dead the tricolour was flown at half mast over Government Buildings while in the Dáil TDs stood for a minute’s silence.
Earlier Taoiseach Enda Kenny had confirmed that the Republic’s Diaspora Minister Jimmy Deenihan was travelling to San Francisco to lead the government’s on-the-ground response to the tragedy.
Mr Kenny said everyone had been shocked by loss of life and by the scale of the injuries, adding: “It is a terrible situation to have such a serious and sad incident to take place at the beginning of a summer’s activity and opportunity for so many young people on J-1 visas in the US.”
Tánaiste Joan Burton said that the student visa was “meant to be a rite of passage” but that instead six children had been “wrenched away” from their families “in the most dreadful of circumstances”.
Books of condolence have been opened in colleges and civic offices across Dublin and the rest of the state to allow members of the public to show their support for the families.
Andrew Deeks, president of University College Dublin where several of those killed and injured were students, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the college’s San Francisco office had been helping those affected in whatever way possible.
UCD’s senior chaplain Fr John McNerney was flying to San Francisco to offer support to families and to Irish students staying in the city, he said.
The college’s book of condolences can be accessed online at http://www.ucd.ie/bookofcondolence2015/index.html.
Meanwhile, UCD Students' Union president Marcus O'Halloran said they were offering support for students in Ireland and the US.
“We cannot imagine what the people involved, the loved ones and bereaved are going through. It's something truly horrible,” he said.
