On June 16, 2015, the people of Ireland and the Irish American community were struck by tragedy when six college students lost their lives in a tragic balcony collapse at the Library Gardens apartment block in Berkeley, California.
Five Irish J1 students – Olivia Burke, 21, Eoghan Culligan, 21, Lorcán Miller, 21, Niccolai Schuster, 21, Eimear Walsh, 21 – as well as Irish American student Ashley Donohoe, 22, were celebrating the birthday of fellow Irish J1 student Aoife Beary when the balcony they were standing on collapsed, flinging them from the fourth-floor apartment to the ground below.
Schuster was a second-year politics and history major at University College Dublin, where Miller and Walsh were medical students in their third year.
Burke was entering her fourth year at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, while Culligan was studying supply chain management and logistics at the Dublin Institute of Technology.
Donohoe, whose parents had emigrated from Ireland to California in 1989, was a fifth-year biology student at Sonoma State University.
“The six who are dead have become the children of Ireland,” Ireland’s then-Minister for the Diaspora Jimmy Deenihan told reporters in California in the days after the tragedy.
“They have now become symbols of our country, and the people have responded accordingly in so many different ways.
“I have never seen such an outpouring of genuine sympathy and grief from the whole country for the families of the bereaved.”
Fellow Irish students Hannah Waters, Clodagh Cogley, Niall Murray, Sean Fahey, Jack Halpin, and Conor Flynn were injured the night of the balcony collapse, some seriously.
Additionally, Beary, whose 21st birthday the victims had been celebrating, suffered a serious brain injury during the fall and was left with multiple broken bones and organ lacerations. She subsequently underwent open-heart surgery and received treatment and rehabilitation at hospitals in California and Ireland for months after the tragedy.
Despite her life-altering injuries, Beary went on to campaign for building companies to release public safety records. In 2016, she testified before California’s state legislature, calling for contractors to be more transparent about legal claims against them.
The campaign revealed that the collapsed balcony had been built by a company that had paid out $26.5 million in construction defect settlements that were never reported to California’s license board. A subsequent investigation revealed that the balcony collapsed due to “rot and decay” in the wood.
Beary told the hearing that she had grown up with the friends who died in the tragedy and said that her life had been changed forever.
“Now my birthday will always be their anniversary,” she said. “My life has been changed forever.”
New legislation came into effect on January 1, 2019, requiring contractors, subcontractors, and insurers to report most settlements reached in construction defect cases to the relevant authorities as a result of the tragedy.
Sadly, on January 1, 2022, Beary died in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital after suffering a stroke related to the injuries she sustained in Berkeley. She was 27 years old.
Aoife Beary. (RIP.ie)
Berkeley tragedy investigations
In March 2016, the California District Attorney ruled there would be no criminal charges of manslaughter brought against any one individual or company involved, citing a lack of evidence.
Although the balcony collapsed due to water trapped on the deck during construction, which in turn led to extensive rot, the materials used were all in line with building code regulations and, as such, the Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley felt a “disregard for human life” could not be proven nor could it be shown that “the deadly consequences of those actions were reasonably foreseeable.”
However, the 13 families impacted by the tragedy sued the respective owners, builders, and managers of Library Gardens.
Three other Irish students – Cliodhna Maloney, Caroline Conlon, and Aisling Tallon – who were renting the apartment where the balcony collapsed, also sued for emotional damage.
In April 2017, Segue Construction, the construction company responsible for the balcony that collapsed, lost its license, having been accused of “wilfully disregarding” the building plans and “willfully departing from trade standards” in the construction of the apartments.
Seven months later, the victims’ relatives and the seven survivors of the tragedy settled their legal actions against the corporate owner Blackrock and property manager Greystar.
While the exact sum was not revealed, the Irish Times reported at the time that the figure to “total a substantial multimillion-dollar sum.”
It was reported in June 2018 that Maloney, Conlon, and Tallon had also settled their legal action.
Berkeley memorial
In July 2018, a plaque was unveiled near the site of the tragic balcony collapse as a permanent memorial to the students who lost their lives.
It reads: “Berkeley, named after the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, will forever remember the six young adults from America and Ireland, guests in this city, who tragically died near this spot in a balcony collapse at 2020 Kittredge Street early on the morning of June 16, 2015.
“Cousins Ashley Donohoe of Rohnert Park CA, and Olivia Burke of Dublin, Ireland
“Eoghan Culligan, Lorcán Miller, Niccolai ‘Nick’ Schuster, Eimear Walsh, all of Dublin, Ireland
“Here, the families of those who passed and the community of Berkeley have joined hands to establish a permanent memorial.
“These strawberry trees were planted October 28, 2015 as a living remembrance in the presence of Michael Higgins, President of Ireland. This plaque was placed in June 2018.”
The plaque includes the Irish proverb “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine,” which translates to “We live in each other’s shadows,” as well as a quote from Irish writer James Joyce – “They lived and laughed and loved and left.”
Amb @DanMulhall:”The Berkeley balcony collapse of June 2015 was a terrible tragedy and one which had an enormous effect on Ireland. The depth of grief, shock and sorrow was immense – six young lives so tragically and prematurely ended and serious injury inflicted on so many.” 1/2 pic.twitter.com/LBvXngomlV
— Embassy of Ireland, USA (@IrelandEmbUSA) July 21, 2018
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