In Search of the Missing

by Mick McCarthy

  The bill allows existing dog-breeding businesses to continue to operate for three months after the Act comes into force, and proposes that a local authority would not register premises if the application is not in order, if the applicant is in breach of the Act, or if the local authority believes that the premises are unsuitable for the operation of a dog-breeding business. Once registered, each approved applicant would be issued with a registration certificate that must be prominently displayed.

  The bill also gives power to a local authority to serve an imprisonment notice on the breeding business if the establishment is believed to be in breach of the Act or if it poses a threat to public health or animal welfare. A local authority would also have the power to issue a closure notice requiring a dog-breeding business to close down.

  However, I truly believe any such law will only affect registered owners. No law will prevent unregistered breeders selling their pups and this proposed law will not protect animals from unscrupulous puppy-farm breeders.

  Reminiscence and Recollection

  Most searches linger in the mind, even those that ended shortly after they began or never quite got off the ground. Nine out of ten searches are false alarms. When darkness falls and a person fails to return, panic seems to take over and reports of missing persons come flooding in. Many people reported missing usually turn up themselves, safe and well and often unaware they have been reported as ‘missing’ or that people are searching for them. Before the arrival of mobile phones, I had often driven on a call-out to places as far away as Galway, Wicklow, Donegal or Kerry only to be told on arrival that it was a false alarm. Sometimes, if I was lucky, the gardaí might be on the lookout for me on the road along the way, waiting to tell me to turn back. They knew my van and were often at the county bounds, lying in wait to give me the news that the search was off.

  Once, the son of a wealthy business family from County Cork went missing. When his car was found abandoned a week later at the Cliffs of Moher, his mother rang and asked if I would help in the search. I headed off for Clare with Noel Murphy, Richard Cotter, Áine, members of the Midleton Red Cross and the dogs, Zak, Holly, Bob and Lucy.

  At the cliffs, we met up with a local farmer, who was a member of the Coast Guard. He very kindly offered to act as our guide as we set about scouring the soaring cliffs, which rise to a maximum of 702 feet just north of O’Brien’s Tower. For hours on end, from daytime right through to the evening, we walked the cliffs with the dogs. But they found no scent whatsoever of the missing young man. Later, his mother confided in me that the search had confirmed her belief that her son had simply taken off into the wild blue yonder – probably to Australia – to shake off the shackles of his privileged background and to start afresh. She said he was always getting a slagging from his friends for having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and it had never rested easy with him. I never heard if there was ever any contact from him.

  Another time, Áine and Lucy rushed to the Macroom area to take part in a major search for a young Traveller girl who was reported missing. The girl had been watching television at home with her mother on a Friday night. She said she was feeling tired and went to bed early. Later, when her brother peeped in to check on her, he found an empty bed. A garda superintendent led the search, which took place around the fields and farms near Macroom. Over one hundred locals took part, along with members of An Garda Síochána and the Civil Defence. A description of the girl was issued stating that she was dressed in navy trousers, brown shoes and a brown hoodie. Locals reported two reliable sightings of her on the Saturday morning. The girl’s mother said her daughter’s attitude had changed recently, and something seemed to be upsetting her. The gardaí believed the girl might have been trying to make her way to relatives in Dunmanway. As it turned out, the girl wasn’t missing at all: she had run away from home with her boyfriend.

  On another Friday evening, a major search got underway for a forester from Glengarriff, who had been planting trees at the side of a mountain in Kenmare. He had arranged to be collected at a certain nearby road after work. When he failed to turn up at the meeting point, he was reported missing. However, he had misread his direction and ended up waiting on the wrong road. Once there was no sign of his lift home, he contacted his wife to come for him. Later, while sitting at home in front of the fire watching television, he heard on the news that a search was underway to find him.

  On one search, I was combing through the woods in Connemara. When the gardaí discovered the call-out was a false alarm, they forgot to let me know, and headed off home. I was left stranded at the side of the road with the dog until a lorry driver from Cork spotted us and stopped to give us a lift. As you will understand, I wasn’t at all happy.

  In all my years of searching, one of the most valuable lessons I have learned is never make assumptions about a missing person. We had been called to a hospital at Sarsfield Court in Glanmire, County Cork, to search for a missing patient. Arriving at the hospital whisked me back in time to my early teenage years, as it was here that my older sister Mary worked and lived when she bought me my first guitar and began to put money aside to pay for my music lessons. The hospital, which was only two miles up the road from my parents’ house, had also employed two of my other sisters, Eileen and Mac, and they had lived in too. All three girls worked hard, and resided in small, single rooms, though they would return home by bus for a visit as often as they could. Like the three girls, the rest of my family had started work in their early teens, apart from one of my brothers, who became a priest. Now, this felt like pay-back time to the hospital that had given years of employment to my sisters and allowed Mary to pay for my guitar and music lessons. I was here to search for a missing patient and I was going to do everything in my power to find him. The nurses and Civil Defence people had already combed through the buildings and land within the boundaries of the hospital, which was located in a built-up area. The assistant matron told me that some of the patients to have previously gone missing had made their way to the main road and waited for a bus to the city. I brought along Dex and Eiger to work them in turns. While one searched, I kept the other on a lead. If the missing man was in open ground, I knew that the dogs would find him in no time at all. But having scoured the area around the hospital, we found no trace of him.

  Then, about a half-mile from the hospital building, we came to an overgrown, gated orchard on rough ground. The orchard was blocked off by ditches and strewn with the remains of old trees. When I suggested that we should search the orchard, I was told not to bother as the nurses believed there was no way the missing patient could have made it down that far because he couldn’t even walk to the bathroom without the help of two people. They were so insistent that I gave in and moved on to another area. But I had a gut feeling about that orchard. I knew one of the members of the Civil Defence well, so later I took her aside on the quiet and asked her to slip in to check the orchard. A few others went with her, and after only a matter of minutes called us in. They had found the missing man there, lying out in the open, alive. He was much more capable than anyone had thought.

  The media love a hero-doggy story. Sometimes, they give credit to the dogs even when they don’t deserve it! Twenty-three Irish Boy Scouts had been reported missing on the Wicklow Mountains after they failed to return from a day’s walk on the hill, which was steep and heavily covered in woodland and heather. On the day, a terrible mist had come down and reduced visibility to the point where a safe descent was impossible. The Scouts had no mobile phones and no way of making contact for help. A massive air-and-land search got underway. The press and television coverage was huge, and the media had a field day with the drama. Some of the newspapers the following morning slated the Scouts for ever setting off on the walk.

  Dex and I were among the searchers. While working Dex along the top of a ridge, I found footprints near a fence encircling a large area of woodland, which suggested that the Scouts may have headed back down towards the base. I imm
ediately alerted the search base by two-way radio. This created some excitement among the media, and straight away I received a radio message asking me to confirm the ‘find’. I repeated that I had only come across several fresh footprints and hadn’t actually seen anyone. Shortly after I spotted the footprints, four other searchers were walking upwards from the bottom when they met the Boy Scouts making their way down. All were safe and well but were whisked off to hospital by ambulance as a precaution. It emerged that the Scouts had taken shelter for the night along a tree line after they weighed up the situation and decided that walking down the mountain in the mist was a risk they should not take. The leaders had done everything by the book, and even got a singsong going to keep up their spirits.

  Back at the base, a number of reporters interviewed me about the search. I told it as it happened, and pointed to the four people who had first come across the Scouts. But the morning newspapers told a very different story: one front page featured a picture of a dog named Dex that wasn’t Dex at all, and a heading stating that Dex had saved twenty-three Scouts!

  River Lee Search

  At 1.45 a.m. on Thursday 12 November 2009 a young man parted with his friends at Daunt Square in Cork city after a night out with an Irish-language club. When he failed to turn up at his student accommodation, friends tried to contact him on his mobile phone but could not get in touch with him, as it seemed to be switched off. They started to worry, and reported him missing. The last CCTV sighting of the student showed him walking alone through the gates of Custom House Quay an hour or two after leaving his friends. Naval divers searched a part of the River Lee on the Friday, but the search was hampered by bad weather.

  On the night after the teenager disappeared, we got the shout. The gardaí briefed us at Anglesea Street garda station. Having obtained some articles of clothing from the missing person’s apartment, we headed for Custom House Quay. It was now around 10 p.m., and the rain was pouring out of the heavens. We needed to answer one question for the gardaí: Where did the missing young man go after he went through the entrance gates?

  Áine asked Lucy to take scent from the articles, and even though it was raining heavily, she began to cast around in an attempt to pick up a trail. Lucy – being the wise, experienced old dog that she is – searched every nook and cranny around the entrance gates for scent. She knows that scent will lodge and hold in holes in the ground, pillars and walls, and under wheel arches in parked cars or any sheltered spot in the area. After a few minutes, she picked up and began heading in from the gates. Despite the bad weather, she seemed to be on a definite trail. Having worked bloodhounds for the past several years, we know that Irish weather is not extreme enough to prevent them from trailing successfully. Lucy and the other hounds will follow a trail that is several days old in rain or snow without any apparent problem. She trailed in and turned right, ending on the quay wall facing Kennedy Quay. That was enough for us: we trusted her fully now. We told the gardaí that the missing student had stood on the quay wall where Lucy had come to a halt.

  On the Saturday I brought along Zak, a trained cadaver dog for both land and water, with many successful finds to his credit. With the co-operation of the Civil Defence River Rescue Unit – which is always willing and able to help – we began a search of the harbour. As we started to comb the river, the boat slowly zigzagged from one bank to the other, over and back, trying to cover every angle, at times almost static. I concentrated on Zak’s body language. Good water-search dogs are calm and focused, not like on land, where their indication can be much more animated and vocal. If dogs are overanxious, constantly whining and pawing the water, they are of little or no use as water-search dogs.

  Conditions were extremely rough, but the adrenaline was pumping, and we took little notice of the weather. But then, after the first hour, the wind and chill factors made themselves felt. We were frozen to the bone. I was wearing my survival suit and life jacket, but it was impossible to protect my face completely from the wind. Zak might give only the slightest of indications, maybe just the flick of the ears, which I could miss in the blink of an eye.

  We began at Blackrock Castle and searched out towards Glanmire. Then we turned around, glided at a different angle, and trawled down along to Brian Boru Bridge. Scent might only exit from the water for a couple of seconds, and the exit point can vary depending on the wind and whether the tide is coming in or going out. Pinpointing exactly where a body might be is almost impossible as once a scent leaves a body it follows the current. A dog may give an indication at a particular point but the body itself might lie a quarter of a mile from there. The Lee is split into two channels: one goes up by the Clarion Hotel and the other flows under Patrick’s Bridge. Searching a normal river is easy, but searching a harbour is much harder because of the depth.

  At the time, the MV Julia, a ten-deck ship, was undergoing a refit and was berthed near Water Street at Horgan’s Quay. About a hundred yards below the vessel were two barges. Zak showed a tickle there, a possible indication. We carried on further, and went out beyond Blackrock Castle. When we came back by the barges, Zak again barked. We now had a definite indication.

  On Sunday we went out on the river again, and moved back down towards the barges. Zak barked again at exactly the same point. I told the gardaí he was picking up a cadaver scent there, and explained that the scent was exiting the water in that area. The flood-swollen water was foamy and flowing fast. It was now an ocean of waves with a life of its own. Tree trunks, gas bottles and other debris floated swiftly by. We expected that the body would be further down towards Blackrock Castle, but Zak kept indicating in roughly the same spot.

  In the early hours of Thursday 19 November, a second person was reported missing after an eyewitness saw a young man swinging from Christy Ring Bridge, falling in accidentally, and being swept along and beneath a second bridge. At that time, pressure on the Inniscarra dam was increasing relentlessly because of very heavy rain. Until then, the danger of flooding in Cork city was usually associated with incoming tides, but now it was the soaring pressure on the dam that posed the major threat. At that point, rumours were already rife on the streets of Cork that the release of water at the dam had been delayed because of the ongoing search for the young student. At 11.30 a.m. the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) said it would have to increase the release of water from the dam in the next two hours. Water discharge would reach three hundred cubic metres per second, but the people of Cork were assured that the release would pose no threat to their city.

  Already, farmers close to the river were becoming more and more alarmed by the force of the water, which quickly gushed through their lands, flooding fields, ditches and dykes. By 9.30 p.m. the Carrigrohane Straight on the edge of Cork city – which boasts the towering County Hall on one side and the five-star Kingsley Hotel on the other – had become impassable. Young farmers arriving on tractors to help couldn’t even make it through. Cars were swept away. Later, the Kingsley – which had an underground car park – had to be evacuated. A wall at Grenville Place, near the Mercy Hospital, was on the verge of collapse as the water continued to flow non-stop. The city’s water supply was also under threat and pumps were shut down.

  Between 9.50 p.m. on Thursday 19 November and 3.50 a.m. on 20 November – a period of six hours – the ESB released 546 cubic metres of water per second from the Inniscarra dam, and the River Lee burst its banks. As Friday morning dawned over Cork city, the full devastation of the night before came to light. Businesses and homes had been ruined. Stories emerged about people in areas such as Grattan Street close to the Mercy Hospital who had been sound asleep in their beds, unaware that their homes were already flooded, only to be awoken by kind neighbours banging on their doors, warning them to get out. The quay wall at Grenville Place had collapsed and forced the nearby Mercy Hospital to close its Accident and Emergency Unit. Many staff at the hospital had to travel to work by boat.

  The city’s water works were also flooded, while the city’s main
water-treatment plant on the Lee Road was badly damaged, leaving reservoirs with a seriously insufficient supply of uncontaminated drinking water, which was expected to last for less than two days. Already, many homes in the city were without water, and plans were set in motion for the army to distribute tankers of emergency drinking water to the public.

  A crisis-management team was set up to deal with the appalling aftermath, and came together in the incident room at City Hall. It was calculated that when the River Lee burst its banks, it left behind a trail of property devastation estimated at €140.7 million.

  The storage area of Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork had been destroyed when water came running through the building. Other buildings on the campus were also flooded, and all lectures were subsequently cancelled until 30 November. Calling off the lectures at the college would help the search as more students would now be free to join those looking for their missing fellow student.