SOMEBODY HAD ROLLED A DEAD BABY IN A DUVET COVER
Somebody had rolled a dead baby in duvet cover'
PADDY MAGOWAN, 71
A PART-TIME firefighter and district manager of Omagh Ulsterbus station in 1998, the local councillor had been driving to the town centre when the bomb went off. He was one of the first to arrive.
"There was no ambulance by that stage, no fire brigade, nothing but people and they were all running and screaming and injured, terribly injured and of course dying.
"I had been a fireman for 25 years and I had seen carnage at first hand believe you me. I had collected bodies of soldiers and pieces of flesh and pieces of men, different heads and arms, you name it in bombs here but that day was unimaginable.
"There was a shop here with bed linen, duvets and eiderdowns and we rolled up bodies in some of those and we left them, at least they were covered in the street.
"We made makeshift stretchers and put people on it. People kept shouting at me, 'What are we going to do, what are we going to do?'
"At that moment when I lifted my head from what we were working on the street I saw a bus just in front of us. I said, 'put them on the bus'.
"And we filled the bus with injured and walking wounded and sent them to the hospital. All in all there must have been 80 or 90 people taken by bus. People's blood was actually flowing down the steps.
"It was absolutely horrendous. I remember myself and a young chap who worked in one of the hardware stores, him and I sort of working in a wee team together and there was this duvet cover and I said 'we'll cover up people with this'. I ran over to lift it and when I rolled it back there was a dead baby there, somebody had already rolled a wee dead baby up in it."
PADDY MAGOWAN, 71
A PART-TIME firefighter and district manager of Omagh Ulsterbus station in 1998, the local councillor had been driving to the town centre when the bomb went off. He was one of the first to arrive.
"There was no ambulance by that stage, no fire brigade, nothing but people and they were all running and screaming and injured, terribly injured and of course dying.
"I had been a fireman for 25 years and I had seen carnage at first hand believe you me. I had collected bodies of soldiers and pieces of flesh and pieces of men, different heads and arms, you name it in bombs here but that day was unimaginable.
"There was a shop here with bed linen, duvets and eiderdowns and we rolled up bodies in some of those and we left them, at least they were covered in the street.
"We made makeshift stretchers and put people on it. People kept shouting at me, 'What are we going to do, what are we going to do?'
"At that moment when I lifted my head from what we were working on the street I saw a bus just in front of us. I said, 'put them on the bus'.
"And we filled the bus with injured and walking wounded and sent them to the hospital. All in all there must have been 80 or 90 people taken by bus. People's blood was actually flowing down the steps.
"It was absolutely horrendous. I remember myself and a young chap who worked in one of the hardware stores, him and I sort of working in a wee team together and there was this duvet cover and I said 'we'll cover up people with this'. I ran over to lift it and when I rolled it back there was a dead baby there, somebody had already rolled a wee dead baby up in it."
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT10An/15
Published Date: 13-Aug-08
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