Tina Brennen

“There are times in life when within minutes lives can be changed forever. This was the case for thousands of people here on Thursday, 2nd August 1973.

My husband and I had just settled down to watch ‘Top of the Pops’ at 7.30pm in our flat at, 4 Royal Avenue, Onchan, just behind Port Jack. Our baby was asleep in her cot, when John noticed a thin plume of smoke over the rooftops towards Douglas promenade. We thought it was just a chimney fire, then it got thicker and blacker. He went to have a look and within minutes came rushing back to say Summerland was on fire.

I left him with the baby and went to have a look. Standing in the small garden which is now a memorial to Steve Hislop I watched in total horror and disbelief at what was before me. One side of the building was being eaten by fire as if it was paper, jumping from pane to pane of what I now know is Oroglas, rapidly spreading to the roof and moving so fast. It was like a horror movie.

Maybe a dozen people were standing there but I don't remember any sound. I looked across the sweep of the bay and could see thousands of people, all watching the devastation that was unfolding. Standing on the cliffs I was at roof height and looking down to the back of Summerland. I couldn't see any movement. Nothing was happening, no one was doing anything. I remember screaming in my head “where is everyone, why is no one here”.

Of course I know now the emergency services didn't get there until around 8.05pm, a good 25 minutes after the fire started through no fault of their own. So many thoughts were running through my head. I knew without doubt there would be people struggling in there, maybe even dying. I did the only thing I could do, what millions of people do in times when there is nothing else, I prayed to God that if there was anyone in there who needed help please could he take them up in his arms and help them to get out.

I knew a fire like that is caused, it doesn't just happen, and at that moment a thought came to me in a flash that at some time I would have to do something about it, that at some time I would have to bear witness to it. This scared me. I wasn't equipped or prepared to do anything. At 19 I didn't even know who my MHK was. It took until the 40th anniversary when I realised a memorial was being built in the Kaye Gardens and I couldn't understand why it was being put there and not on the actual site where the 50 lives were lost. That was the start of my campaign to get a memorial on the site.

I will keep raising awareness, keep fighting against all the injustice suffered by so many even up to the present, and I'll keep campaigning for a memorial on the site where it should have been from the first anniversary of the fire.”