A "shellshocked" Ryan Tubridy paid an emotional tribute to the Creeslough community after a devastation explosion claimed the lives of 10 people.
The horror blast happened at an Applegreen filling station in the Co Donegal village on Friday. The RTE star said this morning: "I’m looking at ten faces at the front of all the papers that I shouldn’t be looking at today. These are ten people that should be going to school and should be going to work.
"They should be having breakfast and should be picking up their coffee. They should be doing what are considered to be mundane things."
Read more: An Post accepting donations to support devastated Creeslough community
Those who died were 50-year-old Robert Garwe and his five-year-old daughter Shauna Flanagan Garwe; 48-year-old James O’Flaherty; 24-year-old Jessica Gallagher; 49-year-old Martin McGill; 39-year-old Catherine O’Donnell and her 13-year-old son James Monaghan; 59-year-old Hugh Kelly; 49-year-old Martina Martin; and 14-year-old Leona Harper.
Speaking on the Ryan Tubridy Show, Ryan said: "It feels like a bomb went off. Of course, it wasn’t a bomb, it was an explosion.
"People are still shellshocked. Shellshocked by the number of victims and the ages of them. Shellshocked by the randomness of it all."
Ryan added that a listener had gotten in touch with him on Instagram over the weekend to say that her husband was the last man out of the station before the explosion happened. He said: "He closed the door and the explosion happened. Random. He’s there today for breakfast. It’s unfathomable."
The RTE host spoke about five-year-old Shauna Flanagan Garwe who went in with her father to buy a cake for her mother. A devastated Ryan said: "It’s unimaginable.
"The magnitude of the grief that these families are going through is unimaginable. The bleakness of the future for these families is unimaginable."
But Ryan said he was struck by hope after reading about hardworking volunteers digging overnight to look for survivors. He added: "You get hope when you see the kindness of the community, don’t you? You get hope when you see people handing out sandwiches and coffee and saying, ‘No charge’.
"I was reading today of people working all through the night with diggers and their bare hands just to try and find some hope amongst the rubble.
"You get hope from the strength in people’s faces and from the desire of the people, friends, families, neighbours, citizens who want to be of help."
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