‘In the shadow of each other, we live’, President says at Berkeley

President Michael D Higgins evoked an Irish saying, "Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine" – "In the shadow of each other, we live" – when recalling that terrible night in Berkeley, California in June.

On a visit to the city, he told first emergency responders and volunteers who emerged from the shadows in the minutes, hours and days after the fatal balcony collapse that they became “pillars” of support.

Mr Higgins expressed gratitude for how they responded to the accident that killed five Dublin students and one Irish-American woman, injured seven other students and traumatised many more.

“All of you shared this tragedy with us,” he said at a reception in honour of the emergency staff, medics and volunteers around the corner from the scene of the Kittredge Street tragedy.

Compassion

“In the blink of an eye, these young, talented and bright students – most of whom were thousands of miles from home – and their families and friends suddenly needed the compassion and intensive support of those where they found themselves, people who turned out not to be strangers but great friends,” the President said.

“You did not fail them. Your actions gave such powerful definition to the term ‘hospitality’.”

Riddic Bowers, a lieutenant in the coroner’s bureau of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office who had to break the tragic news to family members, said the President’s visit marked “the closing of a circle”.

“All the lingering thoughts and feelings; things like this help people tie everything back together,” said Mr Bowers, who was on the scene four hours after the accident.

Berkeley’s interim fire chief Avery Webb said that some of his officers were still dealing with the emotions they felt at the scene.

“None of our officers ever experienced something like this, not on this level,” he said.

The President met privately with George and Jackie Donohoe, whose daughter Ashley (22) from Rohnert Park, north of Berkeley, died in the June 16th accident along with her cousin Olivia Burke. Mr Higgins also met Ashley’s sister Amanda. The other four students killed were Niccolai Schuster, Lorcán Miller, Eoghan Culligan and Eimear Walsh, all of whom were 21 years old.

The Donohoes presented a gift of maps of Ireland and the US to Dr James Crew, a doctor at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San José where four of the injured students were treated.

Mr Higgins praised the work of the hospitals around the San Francisco Bay Area that treated the injured and counselled the families and friends of the students, all on J-1 visas for the summer.

“No one spared any effort to help repair what could be fixed,” he said to an audience of more than 200 people at a hotel in downtown Berkeley.

Solidarity

The President praised the roles played by Ireland’s consul general in San Francisco

Philip Grant

, vice-consul Kevin Byrne and their staff as well as the Irish community in the Bay Area.

The Irish word “meitheal” describes moments when a community rallies around in a time of need, he said, and it expressed the solidarity within that “generous and close-knit” community.

Fr Brendan McBride, Donegal-born founder of San Francisco’s Irish Immigration and Pastoral Centre, offered spiritual counsel and along with fellow pastors “gave solace and hope to many,” he said.

Referring to Berkeley’s motto Fiat Lux – “Let there be light” - Mr Higgins invited police, firefighters, medics, volunteers and people of the city – “our keepers of the beacon and the light that is the city of Berkeley” – to stand with him as he and the mayor of Berkeley, Tom Bates, planted two trees in Berkeley’s civic park, around the corner from where the balcony fell four flights.

They planted two Arbutus saplings, a tree native to Ireland and California, in memory of the Berkeley victims. A moment of silence was then observed.

Speaking after Mr Higgins at the reception, Mr Bates said that the city and state of California were taking measures to make sure that a tragedy like this “never, ever” happens again.

Mr Grant, in his remarks introducing the President, paid tribute to the J-1 students who ran to the friends after the balcony collapse, calling them “our first responders”.

Quoting Seamus Heaney, a “poet of Ireland and of Berkeley,” the President in his remarks recited his words: “No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit.

“Nothing is more like ourselves, standing upright, caught between heaven and earth, frail at the extremities yet strong at the central trunk; and nothing is closer to us at the beginning and at the end.”

Mr Higgins told The Irish Times that the trees would be “a reminder that life continues.“The trees will renew themselves in the season and are a gesture to healing,” he said. “they will also be symbols of the generosity of the people in this locality and of all the people who responded quickly.”