Museum visit terror as stairs collapse and trap teachers
Firemen take one of the injured from the Natural History Museum
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Friday July 06 2007
TEN people were injured - one with possible spinal injuries - when a staircase collapsed at a museum in Dublin yesterday, briefly trapping several people under heavy concrete slabs.
The Natural History Museum has been closed indefinitely after the collapse of the 150-year-old limestone staircase.
A safety audit of the building was immediately launched by the National Museum of Ireland.
There were tense scenes amid a torrential downpour as five units of the Dublin Fire Brigade and 11 ambulances ferried the injured on spinal boards to four hospitals around Dublin.
Four of the injured - teachers on a training course - were writhing in pain after they became trapped underneath concrete slabs weighing more than 100 pounds.
The slabs fell on top of them as the staircase collapsed in a seldom-used back section on the first floor of the museum at around 11.30am yesterday.
Fortunately, no one was killed or critically injured and no children were in the area which is normally closed to the public.
"We were very lucky that no one was seriously injured. Most of the injuries were open-wound injuries from sharp edges on the staircase and slight crushing," said Dublin Fire Brigade incident commander Greg O'Dwyer.
All of the injured were among a group of 21 primary school teachers between the ages of 20 and 50 who were attending a Department of Education summer training programme.
Many of the teachers were on the cantilevered stairs or in the immediate vicinity at the time of the accident. One teacher who was in the main gallery at the time said pandemonium broke out when the stairs collapsed.
"We heard a few screams and shouts and a loud muffled bang. We thought that maybe someone had fallen over the rails," she said.
Emergency crews were immediately alerted and paramedics began taking the injured out on spinal boards as a precautionary measure while the building was evacuated.
Safety
About 500 tourists and other museum visitors, the majority of whom were children, were in the front and upper gallery section of the two-and-a-half storey circa 1856 building when the accident occurred.
They were immediately moved to safety out a side entrance on to the ministerial parking lot at Government Buildings. Four of the injured were taken to St Vincent's Hospital where their condition was not considered serious; two were later discharged. Four others were taken to St James Hospital where two were discharged without injury while the condition of the other two was said not to be serious.
Two more were taken to the Mater General Hospital where one patient was admitted for assessment of possible spinal injuries and another was discharged without serious injury.
The injuries were not as serious as they appeared to be initially, an HSE spokesman said.
Dublin Fire Brigade Station Officer Ray Hurley said four of the casualties at the side of the staircase had an agonising wait as rescuers scrambled to remove the concrete slabs which fell on top of them as the staircase sheared away.
"They were in a great deal of pain. But it was our job to assess them and get the ambulances down and get the paramedics down," he said. "It was a big operation in the sense that you had a large number of casualties that had to be treated and each individual had to be treated as a spinal injury, which takes time."
The terrifying accident occurred just as the museum was set to celebrate its 150th anniversary next month and embark on a €15m renovation and refurbishment programme - both of which have been put on hold pending three separate investigations by the Health and Safety Authority, The National Museum and the Office of Public Works.
The museum will remain closed until further notice.
- Allison Bray
