EVEN THE SILENCE SCREAMS IN TRAGIC OMAGH
Even the silence screams in tragic Omagh
By MARTINA DEVLIN
IMAGINE an entire town holding its breath and going about on tiptoe. That was Omagh yesterday.
Lowered voices, glances. Lowered blinds.
The silence was eerie, but broken periodically by the whirring of army helicopters.
There was a question on all lips, but one that people only dared whisper, "when will the funerals take place?'' The first bodies were being released yesterday and parish priest Fr Michael Keaveney said he hoped funerals might start on Wednesday.
"The families have been on to me wanting to make arrangements, but they're giving it under very difficult circumstances. Maybe because this is such a public thing we might have some joint funerals. But I'll leave it in the hands of the families. The town is numbed. People will want to be at these funerals to show solidarity.''
Omagh's imposing Catholic Church the Sacred Heart, is closed for renovations and funerals will have to be conducted from the relatively confined space of a parochial hall.
Funeral Director Jay Maguire said: "I know I'm an undertaker but I don't know how to cope with this. I've lost a neighbour and a friend.''
He was referring to 57-year-old mother Libby Rush.
An RUC officer was frantically working his way through the phone book, trying to find undertakers amid fears there wouldn't be enough to cope in the aftermath of the carnage.
It was anything but business as usual in the Tyrone town, where shops and offices were closed and people huddled on the High Street looking towards the bomb site.
A murmur ran through the crowd and a weeping woman was led through them, shaking uncontrollably. It was Caroline Gibson from Beragh, whose 36-year-old sister Esther was dead.
"I'll miss her wee bed in the bedroom beside me,'' she gasped between sobs.
"She won't be there tonight, she won't be there tomorrow or the rest of the nights.''
Although she was barely able to walk, Caroline insisted on carrying a bouquet of flowers to a makeshift shrine erected alongside police barriers. "I have to go to her,'' she cried.
Onlookers were helpless. "It's like Apocalypse Now in the town. I have never seen it so still,'' said bricklayer Ciaran McClean (34), also from Beragh, a one-street village which lost five of its inhabitants.
"I'm not going to work today, nobody feels up to working. Some people have an awful job to do today, my partner is busy making funeral arrangements for his brother-in-law.''
All day long you passed a stream of men, women and children carrying bunches of flowers towards the scene of the blast.
One Protestant mother drove 45 miles from Bleary near Portadown simply to deposit a bouquet of yellow daisies.
"I had to come,'' she said. "So many children have been killed. I lost a child six years ago from meningitis. The loss of a child from natural causes is something you never recover from, never mind a death in these circumstances.''
"I'm shaking over what happened in Omagh and I'd like to think the whole world was shaking because of it.''
The town had a sense of being cut off turned in on its grief a feeling compounded by the fact that the explosion left 2,500 phone lines out of order.
A British Telecom engineer said he'd answered calls to phone boxes from desperate relatives in France, Belgium, Germany and the US.
As the day wore on, there was growing impatience at the visits from David Trimble, Dr Mo Mowlam and Robert McCartney. "This won't bring anybody back,'' shrugged one man.
But even some of the official representatives were moved to tears. Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Francisco Alvarez Cascos wept openly as he laid flowers in memory of two Spaniards killed on Saturday.
"When you see this silent town you realise the consequences of terrorism,'' he said.
By MARTINA DEVLIN
IMAGINE an entire town holding its breath and going about on tiptoe. That was Omagh yesterday.
Lowered voices, glances. Lowered blinds.
The silence was eerie, but broken periodically by the whirring of army helicopters.
There was a question on all lips, but one that people only dared whisper, "when will the funerals take place?'' The first bodies were being released yesterday and parish priest Fr Michael Keaveney said he hoped funerals might start on Wednesday.
"The families have been on to me wanting to make arrangements, but they're giving it under very difficult circumstances. Maybe because this is such a public thing we might have some joint funerals. But I'll leave it in the hands of the families. The town is numbed. People will want to be at these funerals to show solidarity.''
Omagh's imposing Catholic Church the Sacred Heart, is closed for renovations and funerals will have to be conducted from the relatively confined space of a parochial hall.
Funeral Director Jay Maguire said: "I know I'm an undertaker but I don't know how to cope with this. I've lost a neighbour and a friend.''
He was referring to 57-year-old mother Libby Rush.
An RUC officer was frantically working his way through the phone book, trying to find undertakers amid fears there wouldn't be enough to cope in the aftermath of the carnage.
It was anything but business as usual in the Tyrone town, where shops and offices were closed and people huddled on the High Street looking towards the bomb site.
A murmur ran through the crowd and a weeping woman was led through them, shaking uncontrollably. It was Caroline Gibson from Beragh, whose 36-year-old sister Esther was dead.
"I'll miss her wee bed in the bedroom beside me,'' she gasped between sobs.
"She won't be there tonight, she won't be there tomorrow or the rest of the nights.''
Although she was barely able to walk, Caroline insisted on carrying a bouquet of flowers to a makeshift shrine erected alongside police barriers. "I have to go to her,'' she cried.
Onlookers were helpless. "It's like Apocalypse Now in the town. I have never seen it so still,'' said bricklayer Ciaran McClean (34), also from Beragh, a one-street village which lost five of its inhabitants.
"I'm not going to work today, nobody feels up to working. Some people have an awful job to do today, my partner is busy making funeral arrangements for his brother-in-law.''
All day long you passed a stream of men, women and children carrying bunches of flowers towards the scene of the blast.
One Protestant mother drove 45 miles from Bleary near Portadown simply to deposit a bouquet of yellow daisies.
"I had to come,'' she said. "So many children have been killed. I lost a child six years ago from meningitis. The loss of a child from natural causes is something you never recover from, never mind a death in these circumstances.''
"I'm shaking over what happened in Omagh and I'd like to think the whole world was shaking because of it.''
The town had a sense of being cut off turned in on its grief a feeling compounded by the fact that the explosion left 2,500 phone lines out of order.
A British Telecom engineer said he'd answered calls to phone boxes from desperate relatives in France, Belgium, Germany and the US.
As the day wore on, there was growing impatience at the visits from David Trimble, Dr Mo Mowlam and Robert McCartney. "This won't bring anybody back,'' shrugged one man.
But even some of the official representatives were moved to tears. Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Francisco Alvarez Cascos wept openly as he laid flowers in memory of two Spaniards killed on Saturday.
"When you see this silent town you realise the consequences of terrorism,'' he said.
Further Information
Publisher: IRISH INDEPENDENT
Ref: II/175
Published Date: 18-Aug-98
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