It has been a long week for residents in Berkeley. When six students fell to their death on Tuesday, the community was shaken.
A makeshift memorial put forward by Berkeley residents near the scene of the incident is a daily reminder that the loss of life from five Irish families, and one Irish American family, will not be without demands for answers.
“I saw some of those kids and they ate here,” said Michael, a restaurant worker nearby. “If this could have been prevented, somebody should be to blame.”
Those questions are unlikely to subside as more information comes forward, but for the families, coping has been difficult. The Irish consulate in San Francisco, which has been coordinating the response to the disaster, has urged the media to give families the ability to mourn and maintain privacy.
A friend of the one of the victims said the families were devastated. “I think they understand what has happened, but they are still in shock and I don’t think they are thinking about anything else but their lost loved one,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified.
The Irish students killed were Olivia Burke, 21, Eoghan Culligan, 21, Niccolai (Nick) Schuster, 21, Lorcán Miller, 21, and Eimear Walsh, 21. Ashley Donohoe, 22, held joint Irish-American citizenship.
While the families mourn, investigators are attempting to piece together what exactly went wrong that saw the fourth floor balcony come tumbling down to the ground.
The incident occurred shortly after midnight local time on 16 June. The incident was international news hours later, but controversy erupted after the New York Times wrote an article that prompted outrage in the US and Europe.
The article said the students are “not just a source of aspiration, but also a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara”.
Sarah, a 23-year-old graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley, who was at the scene shortly after the incident and who had briefly attended the event, said on Friday: “I am simply appalled that this kind of language is being used. People are college students. There are parties and people drink. Let’s be realistic and stop blaming the victims.”
Ireland’s junior minister for new communities, culture and equality, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, condemned the NYT article’s references to wild Irish student behaviour in the context of the death toll in Berkeley. The Labour TD tweeted a message to the New York Times on Wednesday saying: “Your newspaper’s reporting of the Berkeley tragedy is a disgrace.”
It has emerged that the company that built the Berkeley apartment building where six people were killed was accused two years ago of building faulty balconies in another project, court documents show.
Segue Construction, of California, paid $3.5m to settle litigation over alleged defects in a condominium development in Millbrae, south of San Francisco, after a homeowners association sued, the homeowners’ lawyer said.
In their lawsuit, the homeowners said the 109-unit complex, The Park Broadway at Millbrae, was damaged by water on outdoor spaces, including balconies ranging between two and five storeys.
The design and construction of outdoor spaces such as balconies were “a very prominent part of the litigation”, said a San Francisco attorney, Thomas Miller, who represented the homeowners.
In the Berkeley disaster, a number of construction experts have also pointed to water damage and possibly dry rot to be leading theories as to why the balcony fell.
When contacted, building management on site said they had never been informed of any weight restrictions and those living in the building were not informed of the potential dangers.
In a statement on Thursday the firm said: “Segue Construction’s hearts go out to the families and loved ones who died or who were injured in this tragic accident.”
The firm also said it had built more than 6,000 units but never had any incident like Tuesday’s.
The American ambassador to Ireland, Kevin O’Malley, said on Wednesday that his embassy has made all the resources available to the Irish government to enable families to travel to the west coast, and that he has been in touch with Flanagan and the taioseach, Enda Kenny.
Kenny said: “My heart breaks for the parents who lost children and I can only imagine the fear in the hearts of other parents.”
“I still don’t even know how to react. This has been so hard on so many of us, especially those who might have know any of the students. People are just sad,” another student said on Friday in Berkeley.
