One by one, hand by hand, the President of Ireland thanked the first responders who rushed to the collapse of a balcony in Berkeley that killed six students.
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Higgins, president of Ireland, right, and his wife, Sabina Higgins, participate in a ceremonial tree planting in Martin Luther King Jr.
The president of Ireland met with Berkeley’s mayor, police officers and paramedics, health workers and area residents to thank them for helping the victims of a June balcony collapse and their families.
Five Irish students, Lorcán Miller, Eimear Walsh, Eoghan Culligan, Niccolai Schuster and Olivia Burke, and American student Ashley Donohoe died when the balcony collapsed during a birthday party in June.
“All of you shared this tragedy with us and that is the reason we join today in solidarity and gratitude … for what you have done to help those who have suffered so much as a result”, Higgins said.
Mr Higgins praised the work of the hospitals around the San Francisco Bay Area that treated the injured and counselled the families and friends of the students, all on J-1 visas for the summer.
Grant said it’s too soon to know if the numbers will be down next year, but that he does not expect a change.
Higgins and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates shoveled dirt around a pair of strawberry tree saplings planted in honor of the victims in the corner of a downtown city park near the Library Gardens complex, the site of the accident.
Higgins recognized the efforts of Consul General Grant and the rest of the consulate staff, along with the Bay Area’s Irish community and Fr. Brendan McBride of the Irish Immigration and Pastoral Center of the Bay Area.
Quoting Seamus Heaney, a “poet of Ireland and of Berkeley”, the President in his remarks recited his words: “No bit of the natural world is more valuable or more vulnerable than the tree bit”.
Last month, three months after the collapse, survivor of the accident Clodagh Cogley paid an emotional tributes to her friends.
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“This event is not going to go unnoticed, it’s not going to go down as a footnote in history”, Bates said.
