This photograph was taken in the late seventies, and shows how quickly streetscapes can change. Merchants Road was originally known as ‘Back Street’ because it was at the back of (outside ) the old city walls. As the docks were developed, a lot of warehousing and industrial buildings were constructed around the area to facilitate companies who were importing and exporting from the port, and so Merchants Road came into being. It was a drab street, quite a bit of the area we see in the foreground was warehousing, like the tall building we see in the centre of our picture.
All of that was to drastically change on the morning of August 16 1971 when a huge fire broke out and swept through a large block of the city centre. It was noticed for the first time at about 11.30am on that Monday. It began in an area to the right of our photograph, almost opposite where the tourist office used to be. Nobody knows what started it though there were many theories at the time — an electrical fault, a carelessly dropped match or cigarette butt maybe. Whatever the cause, the fire very quickly spread and became an inferno.
As it happened, conditions were conducive to spreading the blaze... there was a huge stock of timber stored in one warehouse, about 5,000 tonnes of coal in another, a large stock of paint in another. Many of the buildings had what was known as a ‘Belfast roof’, made up of wooden struts and covered with felt and tar. McDonogh’s yards were completely destroyed and the fire moved very quickly through old buildings around Corbett’s Yard and also through Corbett’s shop which fronted onto Williamsgate Street. The staff of the Bank of Ireland, 19 Eyre Square, managed to remove some of the contents, but the building had to be evacuated because the heat became so intense. The gardaí kept a special watch on the bank for the duration of the fire.
Visually the fire was spectacular but it was also very frightening. Fire brigades came from all over counties Galway and Mayo, and they managed to contain it within the block. There was a chance it could jump streets, and if it did so it would have destroyed much of the city centre. It made a serious attempt to do so when the flames burst through the front of Corbett’s shop and the paint of the buildings opposite began to peel off and catch fire. I remember going up on the roof of the Castle Hotel trying to gauge where it might spread to, and being so concerned it might cross Abbeygate Street that I moved several carloads of valuable stock from our bookshop out to Salthill.
When the flames died down, firemen had to stay on site for several days to make sure the fire did not flare up again. They had to continually hose down and turn over stacks of coal which were still burning. Happily, no one was injured during the crisis. Our photograph illustrates the change on the streetscape affected by the huge inferno, and of course it is different again today, the Eyre Square Centre having since replaced those buildings we see.
One nice (probably apocryphal ) story to come out of the event concerns a group of Americans who were staying in the Great Southern at the time. Among them was a tall, black fireman who thought he might give the locals a hand. He expertly picked up a power hose and trained it on the blaze. One of the local firemen saw him and said, “Jeez, where did you come from?” “Boston, Massachusetts,” said your man. “Well, fair play to ya, the lads from Athenry haven’t arrived yet.”
