Geoghegans focus on rebuilding after fire

No one was hurt in the fire that destroyed buildings and equipment at the Lift Hire Ireland premises last Tuesday night, and thanks to the help of a huge team of locals, business continued on Wednesday morning.

Enda Geoghegan, owner of the business (plus Power Washing Ireland, based at the same premises in Lynn, Mullingar) with his father Syl, said his first thought when he was alerted to the fire around 10.30pm last Tuesday was whether anyone was in the building. Relieved that no one was inside, his focus switched to saving as much as possible.

That they were able to do so was thanks, Enda said, to the Westmeath Fire Service and their staff.

“There are a few groups of people that were instrumental last Tuesday night,” Enda told the Westmeath Examiner. “The first is the fire brigade. They were here in about four minutes from when they were notified – I know they didn’t have far to go – but they really pulled out all the stops to try to extinguish the fire and to save the building as much as possible.”

Enda said they asked the fire fighters if they could save the IT room at the building, and he is grateful that they managed to do that. “That was huge – you can replace the physical assets, but what is held on those servers would be irreplaceable. Our systems all work off those servers, all the drivers have tablets for the jobs, our clients are all invoiced automatically. If the servers stop working...”

My IT Guy, the local company that looks after that technology for Lift Hire Ireland, had someone on the site by 11pm on Tuesday and “they were with us here till 4.30 that morning”, said Enda. They took the servers the fire fighters had saved and set them up in a temporary building on the firm’s new site across the road, and had it done so efficiently that customers barely knew there had been a serious fire the night before.

The other group Enda praised were staff. “At this time of year, we’re putting up the Mullingar Christmas lights, and it was one of the saving graces that, because the guys were doing that, they left the roller door here partly open, so if they needed to get in quickly for something they had easy access – they could shoot in underneath the door. and grab it.

“So, lucky enough, the smoke was coming out the door and people could see it, and the fire crews when they arrived, could see the fire was in here and could get water to it straight away.

“If the door had been down, we probably wouldn’t have known the place was on fire till everything was gone.

“Our own staff came in and helped, they patched up the rood and secured the building. We had to get the damaged truck dragged out of here by crane and loaded up and out of here because it was still smouldering and the fear was it would go on fire again.

“Our lads helped move gear across to the new yard and then at 7 o’clock the following morning the show really took place when we had to get everything out of here and over to the other yard, and make sure the drivers knew where they were going. Customers barely noticed.”

Enda said the building doesn’t look too bad from the outside, but inside there is a lot of damage and at least partial demolition will be necessary.

“We can’t use the offices, all of the electrical systems are burnt, the heating and plumbing have been disconnected because the pipes melted, there’s smoke damage all inside the building, we have no lights, they’re all blackened, some of them melted in the heat. To get the building watertight, we replaced some of the rooflights, a temporary fix. There will be quite a bit of demolition work to do inside to make it safe.

“We’re waiting for the forensic fire engineers to come out and have a look to see exactly where the start of it was, and to pinpoint the problem, so the dangerous parts will have to be demolished while we’re waiting to come up with a plan for refurbishing or replacing the parts that have been damaged.

“One of our truck mounted power washing units was burnt as well – the one that’s the favourite of the boys, the truck itself can’t be repaired, but a lot of the components on the back of it, the tank, the power washers probably can be moved to a new truck, but it all takes time, and at the moment, as we all know, everyone is so busy, it’s so hard to get labour, hard to get suppliers and contractors to do any work like this.”