Game of Thrones star Liam Cunningham has told of his frantic search for his sister on the night of the Stardust fire.
Speaking to Katie Hannon for RTE’s new Upfront podcast, the Dubliner recalled the blaze on February 14, 1981, which killed 48 young people. His younger sister Maria was at the Dublin nightclub that night.
Liam, 61, said: “I remember exactly where I was. I was up having a lemonade. I was a motorbiker at the time, and, for some reason, I drove past the Stardust just before the fire happened.” Later when he was in bed, he heard what he would later learn was the sound of propane gas tanks exploding.
Read more: Families of Stardust fire victims vow to continue fight as inquest set for April
He added: “[I remember] hearing these noises and thinking, ‘What the hell is that? And then being woken up. One of the neighbours had knocked at our door to say there had been a fire in the Stardust.”
So his father and a few neighbours whose children were also at the venue went off to try to find them. Liam said: “The radio was on, there was live reports and they were saying, ‘There’s three dead’. 20 minutes later, ‘Five dead’.
“And the number kept going up, and the waiting, as you can imagine, was horrific because, with every increase in the number, it got closer to the possibility that it was one of your own.
“I hopped on the bike and I went straight to the Mater Hospital. And it was carnage. It was like Vietnam.
“There was just squad cars arriving, ambulances arriving, people coming in with blistered hands.
“I remember being just overwhelmed in the middle of the night with the amount of things going on, the manic nature of it.”
The actor recalled seeing a young man who would have had a bad reputation.
Liam said: “This guy walked in and I recognised him immediately.
“And his hands had been burnt, so much so that the skin was hanging off the tips of his fingers.
“And one of the nurses came over to him, and he was just holding his hands up... she said to him, ‘Look, come over here. I’ll look after you’. And he said, ‘I’m OK. There’s people worse than me. Look after them first’.”
Liam recalled meeting a friend who knew his sister and he told him he had seen her being put into the back of a squad car.
He eventually found her and a friend in Jervis Street Hospital where she received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Liam added: “I stayed for two minutes and said, ‘I have to get home. They don’t know you’re OK. I have to get home’.”
He stopped off on the way at the home of Maria’s pal to let them know she was okay.
The actor said: “Her mother opened the door in her robe, and I just said, ‘Look, I’ve just been to Jervis Street Hospital. I’ve seen Maria and Catherine. They’re OK’.
“And she punched me in the chest. It was the weirdest thing. She just punched me in the chest, and she called me a liar because she’d been listening to the news reports and was convinced that there was hundreds dead and her daughter was dead. And I had to fend her off.
“And I just said, ‘She’s fine. I can’t hang around with you. I’ve told you first. I haven’t even told my mum’.
“I hopped on the back of my bike, and it was 300 yards away. I ran in and told my mum. We had no way of getting the message to my dad, who was searching, and I didn’t know where he was. It was horrific.
“That was a pretty bad night, but it just got impossibly worse for the victims’
families.”
Liam added it was “exactly like” what happened at the Hillsborough disaster, where the victims were blamed.
He said: “It took them so many years to be exonerated purely... because they were working class.”
The new inquests into Stardust deaths are due to begin on April 19.
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