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Warning: This story contains distressing details<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A firefighter who attended the scene of the Omagh bomb has likened its aftermath to an image from the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n Paddy Quinn, who is a current commander for the Northern Ireland Fire Service in the Omagh district, was giving evidence to the inquiry into the 1998 Real IRA bombing.<\/p>\n Twenty-nine people were killed, including nine children, a woman pregnant with twins, and three generations of one family when the explosion ripped through the County Tyrone town.<\/p>\n Mr Quinn, an on-call officer at the time, told the inquiry that in his 29 years as a firefighter nothing he had responded to since the Omagh bomb has “ever come anywhere close”.<\/p>\n He heard the explosion while working at his carpet shop and was the first to arrive at the fire station.<\/p>\n Mr Quinn said none of the firefighters were anxious as there was no mentions of casualties and they assumed the area had been cleared.<\/p>\n He thought they were going to be dealing with damaged buildings and clearing debris or possibly a fire.<\/p>\n He was on the first fire engine to go to Market Street and arrived at a scene of “total chaos, devastation, carnage”.<\/p>\n Referring to a famous photograph from the Vietnam War, he said: “There was a cloud dust and there was a young girl running across the road terrified, and that’s just the image I have of people from Omagh.”<\/p>\n He described to the inquiry the look of “disbelief” and “concern” on the faces of his fire service colleagues.<\/p>\n He said they were local firefighters working in their home town, who were worried their own family members had been caught up in the bomb.<\/p>\n “They were asking where is my wife, my son, my daughter?” he said.<\/p>\n “But they continued to do the job they were called to do and that was help others and search for others.”<\/p>\n He recalled helping an injured woman onto an Ulsterbus and the floor of the bus was red with blood rather than blue.<\/p>\n Paddy Quinn referred to a saying within the fire service, which he said applies to his and others’ experience at Omagh.<\/p>\n “The saying is: “The firefighter may leave the incident, but the incident doesn’t leave the firefighter’,” he told the inquiry.<\/p>\n He explained that he has now been trained to provide help and advice to his colleagues in critical incident stress management and emotional trauma.<\/p>\n‘Total chaos’<\/h2>\n
‘Where is my wife?’<\/h2>\n
‘It was oddly quiet’<\/h2>\n