The population of Creeslough is just 390 people.
This means that Friday’s tragedy must touch every family in a very personal way, the deaths must visit almost every household in the village.
People who visit the aftermath of most scenes of tragedy always talk about the silence. After the initial trauma, silence descends. That was the way in Creeslough on Saturday, there was an overbearing silence.
The road into Creeslough was still lined with emergency vehicles – fire engines, Garda cars, Civil Defence vehicles. Inside the cordon, close to the scene of the Applegreen service station, there were also ambulances but by Saturday, they were waiting to collect bodies, not survivors.
Overhead, fire officers on an elevated platform were using specialist imaging equipment to locate the bodies. Earlier in the morning, specially trained cadaver dogs were also brought in.
At cordons, there were the expected news teams and journalists, talking in pockets with each other, respectful of the work that was going on just yards away.
Women from a local restaurant, moved around quietly with trays of soup and sandwiches, offering them to rescue workers and media. At another cordon, soft drinks and food had been left to sustain emergency teams. That’s one of the things that makes Creeslough and Donegal different. In the midst of their own horror and tragedy, Creeslough people were thinking of others, of the visitors to their village.
Local people were also gathered at the cordon, awaiting news, crying for their lost friends but even their grief were muffled.
Then the silence was broken by the “beep, beep” of a reversing ambulance, backing into the forecourt of the petrol station. No-one announced, no-one said anything but everyone knew the final victim had been found.
As the day wore on, accounts of the desperate efforts to save the victims began to emerge. Local man Ciaran Gallagher was getting ready to visit his brother in Mayo when he heard the bang. People rushed from every corner of the village, joined by men from nearby towns.
They formed human chains, gouging through the muck and debris in desperate efforts to reach the victims below.
“All the local people in the community here in Creeslough, in Sheephaven Bay, you had people from Dunfanaghy, Termon, from all around the parishes helped. There were workmen, tradesmen everywhere. It was a devastating scene to see,” he told a Highland Radio reporter.
Creeslough lies under the majestic Muckish Mountain with Errigal looking on in the distance. To the west is the beautiful Sheephaven Bay and Ards Forest. On Saturday, the trees were in their full autumn beauty.
At the cordon, a man shook his head and said: “This should not happen in a place like this”. He was right.
