Saluting heroic Cork fireman, Dick Beecher, 50 years after his death

In 1975, the fire service in Ireland was in a state of flux.

In Britain, World War II had meant that the old ways of doing things had been swept away. Ever-more technically advanced methods had needed to be devised, and quickly, to counter the threat to the nation’s economic capacity and public morale posed by the Luftwaffe.

This culminated in the creation of the UK’s National Fire Service (NFS) in August, 1941, when more than 1.600 individual brigades were absorbed into the new, sophisticated, unified force.

The Irish Fire Service underwent no such sea-change.

Although the Fire Brigades Act passed into law in 1940 - a knee-jerk reaction to the threat of wartime air raids - it was a lightly-regulated Act with, for example, no Inspectorate to ensure compliance.

Fire brigades here continued more or less as they had always done; the ‘Cinderella’ of local government services, starved of sufficient capital funding.

But by the 1970s the zeitgeist for change was palpable.

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Informed by events in Europe and the UK, and led by a determined coterie of progressive fire officers (including Cork’s City’s Capt. C. I. Garvey, BE, MIFireE), and equally progressive representatives from the firefighters’uUnions, the Irish Government in late 1972 appointed a working party to examine the state of the service.

Their report on the fire service was handed to the Minister for Local Government, James Tully TD, in December 1974: the first such audit since the foundation of the State.

There should, the report concluded, be marked emphasis on training, with, in particular, in-depth instruction in the use of breathing apparatus. Previously, most training had been conducted at local level where facilities were usually scant.

The year 1975 was shaping up to be a historic one for the members of Cork Fire Brigade, with the eagerly-anticipated opening of the new headquarters on Anglesea Street scheduled for June.

In the meantime, the members would continue to operate from the sclerotic Central Fire Station on Sullivan’s Quay, first opened in 1893 and condemned as unfit for purpose as far back as 1942.

The firefighters were, additionally, looking forward to a reduction in their weekly working hours, for which the single-largest intake of recruits (30) since the brigade’s foundation was, since February 4, in training at the Civil Defence Training Centre at Eglinton Street, Cork.

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On the morning of Wednesday, February 22, 1975, some of the members on duty at Sullivan’s Quay were engaged in a breathing apparatus drill.

Such in-station training was limited in its scope as no proper facilities were provided, but the instructors did their best with what was available.

Among the class was 23-year-old Richard (known to all as ‘Dick’) Beecher, of Monkstown, Co. Cork, who had joined the brigade as a recruit in 1973, one of a class of 16.

Dick, son of Mr and Mrs John and Elizabeth Beecher, was the youngest of his siblings, two brothers and a sister, and was engaged to be married.

A prominent and popular member of the Monkstown and Cork Harbour Rowing Club, where he was stroke of the club’s schools crew, he also served in the Military Police Corps of the FCÁ.

In the words of one colleague: “He lived for the job.”

At around noon that day, the general alarm sounded throughout the station and, simultaneously, at the sub-station on Watercourse Road, announcing a fire at Lee White House on Washington Street, a four-storey terraced commercial premises situated directly across the road from St Augustine’s Church.

In less than a minute, units from both stations were converging on the scene, the Sullivan’s Quay sections being mere minutes away.

On arrival, the members of the ‘first attendance’ were tasked to ensure that all occupants had been safely evacuated, and they quickly donned breathing apparatus as they prepared to enter the building on fire.

Retired fire officer Frank Fitzgerald takes up the story: “Dick and I entered the building with a hose and were joined by fireman Adrian Spillett. We crawled up the stairs, slowly, looking for the fire. We entered a room and searched it; somehow, the door closed behind us. However, we got out safely and proceeded to the next floor.

“Although working in total darkness, our search revealed no occupants or any trace of the fire.

“As we reached the top landing there was an almighty bang and we were engulfed in fire - the result of a gas explosion. It was fierce. We were burning! The explosion hit us full-on.

“We could not smell the leaking gas, of course, as we were wearing breathing apparatus.

“Dick was blown into a room and the rest of us were blown down the stairs, where we were discovered by the rescue team.

“Along with four other members who had been injured, we were taken to hospital where we were treated for burns.

“When the rescue party got to poor Dick, sadly, he was beyond human aid.”

Brigade ambulances rushed the injured to the accident and emergency departments then extant in the city.

Dick was taken to St Finbarr’s Hospital; Leading Fireman Denis Carey, along with firemen Fitzgerald, Spillett, and Liam Cotter to the Mercy, while Station Officer Jim Brazil and fireman William McCann were treated at the North Infirmary. All, apart from Dick, were released after treatment and observation.

Dick Beecher was the third member of Cork Fire Brigade to die in the line of duty, after Michael O’Connell (1928) and Colum McGowan (1949).

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After funeral Mass in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Monkstown, Dick was laid to rest with full fire service honours in Passage New Cemetery on February 14, 1975, St Valentine’s Day.

Members of the service from all over Ireland, as well as representatives from An Garda Síochána, the Defence Forces, Aer Rianta, Civil Defence, the voluntary aid organisations, and public bodies marched in the huge funeral cortege.

The casket was carried on a vintage Dennis fire appliance, flanked by a guard of honour of Dick’s comrades, with its fittings dressed in black crepe.

Lord Mayor of Cork, Ald. Pearse Wyse, TD, echoed the sentiments of many when he declared that firemen, by reason of their occupation and duties, had to face hazards daily, and the citizens were deeply indebted to them for their devotion to duty.

“It is on an occasion such as this that the public become more aware than ever of the courage and devotion members of the brigade display in the exercise of their duties,” he added.

Fireman Dick Beecher’s sacrifice was not in vain. There is no doubt that his untimely and tragic death expedited the opening of the State’s first dedicated Breathing Apparatus Training School at Castlebridge House, Co. Wexford, which received its first students within a few years of the events at Washington Street.

He will be remembered at a Mass in St Mary’s Church, Passage West, at 11.30am on Sunday, February 9.

Dormit in pace.