Omagh

Katrina Battisti

Both myself and my husband, Shane, are from Omagh and were in town on the day of the bombing. We were trying to park the car and were redirected to another car park because of the bomb scare. On the way we stopped for forty seconds or so to let some cars pass. If we hadn't, we probably would have been in the vicinity of the bomb when it went off as we were walking in that direction. People were screaming and shouting for help but there was so little you could do. I remember holding paper towels against a girl's wounds to stem the bleeding. People got organised very quickly. Soon after, that girl was taken to hospital in a furniture delivery van. Our immediate worry was Shane's sister, Eileen, who has a hairdressing salon opposite where the bomb went off. As we walked towards the salon we saw clouds of smoke, people were staggering around covered in blood, dazed and scared, and there was a terrible smell of burning flesh. I saw a body underneath the mangled wreckage of a car, though I could see no legs.

Eileen had not been injured by the bomb but the panic had brought on a severe asthma attack and we drove her to hospital, where I had actually been working until the day before. The Out Patients area had been turned into a mini treatment room. Cleaners were washing the blood from the floor and you could hear the noise of helicopters taking people away to other hospitals. Lots of off-duty staff and GPs had come in to help. I remember being told that one person had died and one person lost their legs and I was horrified even then. It was a while before we knew the full scale of the fatalities. Despite the shock, the hospital was well organised. Senior staff were taking details of patients and posting them on the noticeboards so relatives knew which ward to go to.

Omagh is a small town. If you don't know someone, you know of them, so most people knew someone who had lost a member of their family. I just remember when we came home lying down on the sofa, and the impact of what had happened, all the horror, anger and grief we had witnessed, hitting me. I couldn't sleep for a week and couldn't get it out of my head for many months. It's taken a long time for the town to recover physically and psychologically. It's good to see some of the smaller shops which were destroyed coming back. We now have a two year-old daughter and a baby on the way. We can't help thinking sometimes of that forty seconds or so we waited for cars and what might have been.

I think the one thing you can take away from that day is the way people rallied around and did all they could to help. There was a real community spirit and there is great admiration for the way the relatives have fought for justice. People like Michael Gallagher. They could have been overcome with hatred and bitterness but they have conducted themselves with such dignity. What people in Omagh can't understand is what the bombers thought they could achieve. Omagh is a mixed town but it wasn't a divided town before the bombing and it certainly isn't now. If anything it has brought people even closer together.

Geraldine McCrory

I feel that my personal reflections for 2004 are centred on the fact that in the latter twelve months Omagh has finally come to life again with lots of regeneration of the main shopping area. The town now has a 'buzz' about it and this in itself creates, in my view a feeling of 'hope' and 'trust' which had been lost to the town and its community for quite some time.

I attribute this not only to the bomb in Omagh but to the aftermath in which the town, for almost three and half years, had been subjected to regular bomb hoaxes. These had the ability to make the town and community come to a stand still and made us revisit the horrors of the bomb in August '99 - whether we wanted too or not!

For me I see the cessation of these hoax calls as a 'light at the end of the tunnel'. It affords the opportunity for the town of Omagh and its local community to begin taking baby steps towards progress and moving from fear and darkness into optimism and hope!

Jeremy Hardy

Omagh was such a sad, stupid, pointless atrocity, committed by people refusing to look at another way forward.

It was an attack on a largely harmonious town - a town which stands as a symbol for what Northern Ireland could be like.

It's also time that people who want to investigate what happened look not only at the perpetrators but also at the failure of the RUC.

Brian Kennedy

It filled my heart to the brim to hear the people of Omagh sing again after having so much to cry about. Singing seems to be a different kind of crying altogether and although Omagh can never be the same again, their voices rose with a mighty passion known only to those who have lost so much and lived to see another hopeful day. I felt truly humble in the presence of these people.

Written the morning after Brian's recent concert in Omagh (on 22nd May 2004)

Nell McCafferty

We were on the first night of our holidays in Kerry when the news came in. The northerners separated immediately into a miserable group. The television reception was grainy.

Next morning, I went to Mass for the first time since childhood. The priest spoke in Irish, and prayed for the dead of Omagh. Afterwards, in the mist, locals confirmed that we had heard the numbers correctly. Trying to put a face on the little town, I thought of Stevie McKenna, who used to entertain us in the Queen's University Glee Club with his rendition of a Russian dance. Phil Coulter was his pal, then , in the hope-filled sixties.

I do not believe that the bombers meant to kill civilians but their carelessness was morally criminal. It gets on my nerves that the families want to pursue and hold individuals to blame, when all our energies should be directed towards resurrecting the peace process - and the contradiction of that is that I am still clanking my Bloody Sunday chains. So a small part of me cheers for the Omagh survivors who refuse to let any of us forget.