Ireland`s President Honors First Responders in Calif. Balcony Collapse

Oct. 29--Ireland President Michael Higgins came to Berkeley on Wednesday to honor the victims and heroes of a balcony collapse that killed six people, including five Irish nationals -- an event that was mourned in his country as a national tragedy.

Flanked by Berkeley firefighters and others at a private reception at the Hotel Shattuck, Higgins struggled to find words to express his gratitude toward emergency workers and volunteers who helped the victims of the June 16 accident, in which an apartment's rotted fifth-floor balcony plunged to the street below. In addition to the dead, seven others were badly injured.

Higgins walked the hotel ballroom and shook the hands of first responders lined up in two rows on either side. He spoke to family, friends and volunteers about unity.

"The tragedy that took place here in Berkeley had an enormous and serious effect on the Irish people," Higgins said. "All of you shared this tragedy with us."

Referring to the way Irish Americans in the Bay Area stepped in to help the wounded and their families, he said, "It expresses a deeply knit solidarity. It has long been associated with the Irish community of the Bay Area."

Those volunteers included Ronan Jenkinson, who came to the Bay Area from Ireland on the same type of nonimmigrant visa used by the victims of the balcony collapse. The visas are given to those approved to participate in work- and study-based visitor programs. Jenkinson, 26, recalled Wednesday that when he learned of the accident on Facebook, he immediately e-mailed the Irish Consulate.

"I dropped everything," he said. "I felt like it was part of my duty, being Irish. It hit home. It could've been me."

For the next few weeks, Jenkinson helped in any way he could, whether driving friends of the victims to the airport or to hospitals where survivors were treated.

Later Wednesday afternoon, at a silent ceremony outside the Civic Center, Higgins and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates shoveled dirt onto two arbutus trees to commemorate the dead. City officials chose the plant because it is native to both Ireland and Berkeley.

"Mr. President, I'm sorry that you had to visit us under these circumstances," Bates told Higgins, calling the incident one of the worst in city history.

The balcony gave way at 12:40 a.m. during a birthday party at the Library Gardens apartment complex on Kittredge Street. Killed were Ashley Donohoe, 22, of Rohnert Park and Irish citizens Olivia Burke, Eoghan Colligan, Niccolai Schuster, Lorcan Miller and Eimear Walsh, who were all 21.

City inspectors found that moisture had rotted out the balcony's support beams, just eight years after the building was completed. The catastrophe led Berkeley officials to tighten the city's building codes. The Alameda County district attorney's office is still investigating the incident.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno

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