GIRL CAN'T GET THINGS SHE SAW OUT OF HEAD
I can't get the things I saw out of my head' says girl
By Lindy McDowell
THE real horror is not just in the terrible scenes she has witnessed.
The real horror is that such scenes have been witnessed by someone so young.
She is 17. She knows a boy, only 16, who's among the dead. He was waiting for his GCSE results this week. And there's a 14-year-old girl. She knows who's dead too.
She doesn't want to give her name, but she explains that usually she would have been working in one of the shops that took the brunt of the explosion.
But it was her day off, so she and her friends had gone into the town. They'd been up near the courthouse when the warning came and, like so many of the dead and injured, they'd been moved back to what was considered the safety of Market Street.
Was there any panic?
"Her there," she says, pointing to her friend. "She says, 'Come on, get away from here. I don't like this'."
They'd been close to the scene of the explosion at the time. They were walking away when it went off.
"It was terrible. An awful, awful bang. We just ran back to where it was. There was blood everywhere, everywhere. Bodies lying there. There was an old woman, her arms cut off her. We tried to help her.
We saw them lifting one woman out. They used a signpost as a stretcher to carry her. They were running into the dry cleaners and bringing out sheets and shirts and anything to make bandages and wrap around people.
"There was stuff from the jewellers all over the street. All you could see was jewellry and blood.
"The children were screaming and crying for their mothers. The ones who couldn't find their parents, they gathered them all together and took them to Dorothy Perkins so that they'd be away from it.
"I looked into the back of a police Land Rover and there was just an arm lying there.
"People were bringing anything they could out of shops to wrap the people in and trying to get them to hospital any way they could.
"A man I know got a woman who was badly, badly hurt into his car to take her to hospital. She died in the back of the car."
At the hospital she says, everywhere there were people crying and sobbing.
"They had people all along the corridors and they were working on them there. Some people were just holding out their arms and crying and pleading, 'Help me. Help me'."
As she tells her story the girl's eyes are wide with shock but she doesn't cry or show any other emotion.
"I just can't believe this has happened. I can't get the things I saw out of my head," she says. "I'll never get them out of my head."
By Lindy McDowell
THE real horror is not just in the terrible scenes she has witnessed.
The real horror is that such scenes have been witnessed by someone so young.
She is 17. She knows a boy, only 16, who's among the dead. He was waiting for his GCSE results this week. And there's a 14-year-old girl. She knows who's dead too.
She doesn't want to give her name, but she explains that usually she would have been working in one of the shops that took the brunt of the explosion.
But it was her day off, so she and her friends had gone into the town. They'd been up near the courthouse when the warning came and, like so many of the dead and injured, they'd been moved back to what was considered the safety of Market Street.
Was there any panic?
"Her there," she says, pointing to her friend. "She says, 'Come on, get away from here. I don't like this'."
They'd been close to the scene of the explosion at the time. They were walking away when it went off.
"It was terrible. An awful, awful bang. We just ran back to where it was. There was blood everywhere, everywhere. Bodies lying there. There was an old woman, her arms cut off her. We tried to help her.
We saw them lifting one woman out. They used a signpost as a stretcher to carry her. They were running into the dry cleaners and bringing out sheets and shirts and anything to make bandages and wrap around people.
"There was stuff from the jewellers all over the street. All you could see was jewellry and blood.
"The children were screaming and crying for their mothers. The ones who couldn't find their parents, they gathered them all together and took them to Dorothy Perkins so that they'd be away from it.
"I looked into the back of a police Land Rover and there was just an arm lying there.
"People were bringing anything they could out of shops to wrap the people in and trying to get them to hospital any way they could.
"A man I know got a woman who was badly, badly hurt into his car to take her to hospital. She died in the back of the car."
At the hospital she says, everywhere there were people crying and sobbing.
"They had people all along the corridors and they were working on them there. Some people were just holding out their arms and crying and pleading, 'Help me. Help me'."
As she tells her story the girl's eyes are wide with shock but she doesn't cry or show any other emotion.
"I just can't believe this has happened. I can't get the things I saw out of my head," she says. "I'll never get them out of my head."
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT/0034
Published Date: 17-Aug-98
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