This article is from page 15 of the 2009-07-21 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
A PLUME of coloured smoke ema- nating from a plant in Shannon prompted fears that it would lead to poisoning or an explosion and led to panic.
That was according to a garda, who attended Chemifloc, after reports that a plume of smoke was coming from the premises.
Garda Pat Keating told the trial that he received a call at around 5.25pm on May 24, 2007, suggesting that a lot of smoke was emanating from the Chemifloc premises. He was travel- ling from Ennis to Shannon at the time.
He arrived at the plant a short time later. “I could see heavy red/orange smoke bellowing from the plant. The smoke was coming out of a stack. It was very low. It was spreading to the Ballycasey residential area,’ Gda Keating told Ennis Circuit Court.
“IT was seven or eight miles from Shannon when I saw the smoke,” he added.
He said he went to the plant, where the gates were closed.
‘The smoke was thick. My primary concern was for the people that were around. I was genuinely very wor- ried. The kind of smoke’ we never saw anything like it before,’ he said.
He set up road blocks at the two main entrances to the estate. He told the jury he could remember the inci- dent very clearly.
‘People were coming up to me pan- icking. I didn’t smell anything. The colour of it was so unusual, I was fearful of poisoning or an explosion,” he said.
He said he got the all-clear at around 6.30pm and then lifted the road blocks.
Michael Kiely, a fire officer, also attended the scene that evening. He told the court that there was a “yel- low cloud over the plant”, which was travelling towards the town centre, “the residential side of Shannon.”
He said he spoke to one of the op- erators, in an effort to ascertain what was going on. “He said one of the
scrubbers had shut down and they were putting this material in to help neutralise it,’ he said.
He said the colour of the “cloud” later changed to clear. A number of witnesses who saw a plume of smoke that evening also gave evidence.
Michael O’ Sullivan, who was work- ing in an engineering plant in Smith- stown, said he saw smoke “pretty low down, it wasn’t very high.”
Darren Gardiner, a machine opera- tor in Shannon, said he was on his way home from work when he saw a plume of smoke.
“T could see that the plume of mus- tardy coloured smoke was emanating from a facility in the industrial estate. I couldn’t identify exactly which stack within the Chemifloc plant that it was emanating from,” he said.
He said there was no smell from it.
Another witness, Brendan Potter, who also works in Shannon, told the court he could see smoke coming out of Chemifloc. “The smoke was so thick you couldn’t actually see through it,” he said.