On Sunday the 28th of May 2023, there was a serious fire in the Falcon’s View apartment block, which is situated beside the Crowne Plaza Hotel and next to the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. Approximately 97 apartments were evacuated with the extreme risk of fire spreading to the entire complex. The fire rapidly spread up and down between floors but was contained laterally within the building and some of the floors next to each other were not damaged where the fire breaks held.
The balconies are clad with wood, and it appeared to onlookers from the ground, that the fire was able to get behind the wooden cladding, and then spread through gaps or other mechanisms from one balcony to the other. It was an incredibly fast spread of fire – within 5 minutes, 5 balconies were partially involved, and within 10 minutes, most of those balconies were fully engulfed.
There are rumours circulating, however, the cause of the fire is still unknown.
The management company turned up and spoke to people at approximately 6pm, two hours after the fire had started, and when the fire was almost under control. The management company asked people if they had friends and family to stay with because of the critical accommodation situation in Dublin they were not able to accommodate everyone.
However, on the first night, most people either stayed with friends and family or were put up in a hotel in Tyrrelstown. The hotel in Tyrrelstown was only able to accommodate people for one night and those people all had to check out at 12PM on Monday the 29th of May 2023.
Lessons should be immediately learnt. Training for people who are living in high-rise buildings to close all doors, if it is safe to do so, should actually be implemented. There should have been an attempt at least to have some sort of sprinkler system on the balconies to try and control the spread of the fire. The fire was also exacerbated by the fact that the wood on the balconies is now quite old and dry. And this wood seems to burn very quickly. It also became a source of fuel when parts of the wood fell down from other balconies and ignited them as well.
