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IT WAS JUST an ordinary day for the Irish Soffe family in Qatar on 29 May 2014, when an incident involving an air conditioning unit turned it into a nightmare.
The unit in six-month-old baby Elizabeth’s room went on fire, severely burning her in the process. She lost half of her fingers on both hands, and her left thumb, as well as having extensive burns over her body. She will have to have lifelong treatment due to her injuries.
Now, almost three years on, the Dublin family says it’s still fighting for closure – and compensation.
The family had been Qatar for over three years and two of their children, William and Elizabeth, were born there. Liam Soffe, who is a civil engineer, had moved to Qatar because of the huge amount of construction work taking place in advance of the 2022 World Cup.
“There is a big Irish community there, there is an Irish society there who helped us a lot after the fire. So we really built our life there,” he said.
Liam told TheJournal.ie this week that he and his wife Sinead are currently involved in a civil court case with Al Asmakh Real Estate, which rented them the house where the incident occurred.
He said that the family are also seeking a full investigation into what occurred on the day of the blaze, and are seeking the Irish government’s help with this. The police investigation in Qatar has concluded but the family say they want an another investigation to take place.
They have written to the Taoiseach, and Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan on the issue.
Liam Soffe described what happened on the day of the fire:
[Elizabeth] was in her cot – she was six months old. She was in her cot for 30 seconds before Sinead heard her crying, she never cried so she went up straight away. There was smoke coming out of the room, the cot was on fire, Elizabeth was on fire, the rest of the room was on fire. So Sinead got her out… and our son William who was two years old, got him out as well.
The Soffe family are now living in Birmingham, the city where Elizabeth was brought to for specialist treatment five days after the fire in 2014. The family – including Elizabeth’s siblings Amelia, William and Daniel – have settled there as Elizabeth will need to remain in the city permanently.
We arrived in the UK as refugees almost, everything we had was destroyed in a fire. The family was separated, Elizabeth was in a coma. But we’ve built a life for ourselves here that’s built around her needs. We have settled here permanently.
“When she arrived she was in a coma in the ICU,” said Liam. “The reason the hospital [in Birmingham] was so important was because it had a paediatric ICU but also a paediatric burns centre. It was really hard to find a hospital with both. They have a great team of plastic surgeons.”
Elizabeth was in the ICU, then the burns centre for a few months, and then was able to come home. But her treatment will be life-long. “She goes in every couple of weeks for appointments. And then every few months she has skin graft, skin release, hand reconstruction,” said her father.
Later in life, she will most likely have facial reconstruction on her nose, and a prosthetic ear fitted. “She is very badly scarred obviously,” said Liam. “She has had skin grafted.”
She had burns on her head, face, chest, both her arms, everywhere except her back, said Liam. Skin from her back has been used for skin grafts. However, grafted skin doesn’t grow at the rate of ‘normal’ skin and so skin release treatments are needed.
“She’ll be under the care of the hospital for her whole life and she’ll move to the adult hospital,” said Liam.
‘She shows amazing resilience’
It’s a lot of treatment for a young girl, but Liam describes his daughter as “amazing – she is the most determined person you would ever meet”.
“She goes for the eight-hour operations and then she wakes up and within half an hour she’s looking to run around the hospital,” he said. “She shows amazing resilience every day and puts the rest of us to shame. She’s a very happy little girl.”
While Elizabeth “doesn’t know any different” as she was so young when she was burned, her family worry for her as she gets older.
“At the moment she’s three-and-a-half and all she wants is eyebrows and fingernails,” said her dad. “She’ll, I suppose, grow up and want other things and I can’t imagine… At the moment if she’s upset she is a baby so it’s easy to deal with it.”
He fears about the impact of the severe injuries on her, and on how others might see her. “I just want her to have the same opportunities as others,” said Liam.
The most upsetting part I suppose is she is not and never will be the girl that she was supposed to be. Her whole life will be about this – she will never be able to walk into a room and not have people stare at her.
“She is very badly scarred, disfigured, and that will always be the case. There is no medical procedure she can go through to fix that.”
But overall, what he really wants is closure on a case which has dominated the family’s life since 2014.
“What we want is closure – we want a proper investigation, whatever the outcome,” he said.
Not a day has gone by since the fire that we haven’t had to ring somebody or write a letter to somebody or write an email to try and deal with the issues. We want to leave it behind us and deal with the battle in front of us and not every day look back and deal with issues in Qatar. We want to move on and move on with our lives.
The family have also contacted the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs to get involved in the issue, because they want the incident investigated again.
Additionally, they decided to take civil proceedings against Al Asmakh in January of this year. “The civil thing is separate – it is to secure her future,” explained Liam.
The Department of Foreign affairs said that department consular officials in Dublin and at the accredited embassy in Abu Dhabi are aware of the case and have been engaged in providing assistance. The department said that as per its policy, it would not be going into detail on the specifics of any individual case.
The family are seeking compensation for what occurred in order to pay for Elizabeth’s treatment as the years go on. They raised money through an online fundraiser in 2014, but are not currently seeking donations.
“Some day somebody will invent some medical procedure to improve the movement in her hand or something, but we need to be able to pay for that when it’s invented,” said her dad.
“She’ll need an adapted car, an adapted bike. She needs physiotherapy five times a day and scar management five times a day. We do that at the moment because there is no other option. She needs a physiotherapist. The NHS is great, it saved her life, she had lots of operations, fantastic plastic surgery. But for this long-term daily physio it is not very good. That is why we have to go to such lengths.”
Liam said that the police report said the air con unit in the bedroom Elizabeth was in “wasn’t wired correctly so it heated up and went on fire”.
“We had had a lot of electrical issues in the house with electrical units – not that particular one,” he said, adding that maintenance staff had worked on the other units.
He said that Al Asmakh “said and have continued to say that they are willing to assist us financially but it’s actually delivering on that promise has been that problem that we’ve struggled with for three years”.
The family provided the real estate agent with an estimate of what life treatment for their daughter would cost. “And we still haven’t claimed any money from them,” said Liam.
There have been five hearings and at every one Al Asmakh has said they need more time, said Liam.
Recently, Doha News spoke to Al Asmakh, whose spokesperson told them in a statement that the company has written evidence proving that it warned the Soffe family not to use their air-conditioning units before the fire.
This is denied by Liam Soffe.
“In Qatar in May it’s 50 degrees. So if your air con units don’t work you have to move out.
Nobody ever told us they were unsafe, ever,” said Liam.
Liam was interviewed by police after the incident, although he wasn’t there on the day.
“They said that in my statement I said I believed it was an act of God and that meant they didn’t need to prosecute anyone,” said Liam. “My statement was in Arabic and I had a translator provided by company I worked with. I gave my statement, he translated it. There was no suggestion that an act of God was ever in there but it is in there in a statement. Even if it was something you would say, is that really how they are going to determine what they do?”
He said that the family want the DFA involved “to try and explain to the Qatari authorities that there needed to be a proper investigation so we can establish what actually happened”.
Liam said he would like the Department of Foreign Affairs to talk to the Qatari ambassador in London about the issue, and ask the questions they want answered about the fire.
“Elizabeth is going to grow up and ask what happened and we want to be able to answer her questions,” said her father. “We don’t want to just say we wrote them letters and we never found out.”
He said that strangers have already made comments about the three-year-old in public, and that he fears that as she gets older “people are going to stare at her and make comments”.
The family’s next court date is 12 June, where they will again be represented pro bono by a firm of solicitors.
Al Asmakh Real Estate has been contacted for a comment but had not replied at the time of publication.
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Took a bus to town yesterday. Everyone was wearing masks. Very proud of Ireland.
@Seriousnojoke: Went into Dunnes today.NONE of the staff wearing masks.Security guard on front door without mask. What about that??
@Billy McNamara: There is room for improvement indeed.
Just to add a bit of perspective to the article, it fails to mention that 9,928,960 people have recovered , there is only 5,649,118 currently infected, and of that 5,582,829 are in mild condition and 66,226 in serious or critical condition. Source: _https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
(FYI can’t post links here but just Google the above link to confirm)
@Thornto84: 10 people currently in hospital here in Ireland
@Thornto84: it also states that 15% got very sick needing hospital care. That’s about 3million people. Most of them will need medical care for rest of their lives because of damage done to organs by the virus
@Macca Attack: I’m probably generally on your side of the divide in this argument (against people who downplay the virus), but genuine question, are there stats to support that the majority of those who need hospitalisation never make a full recovery ?
@Macca Attack: care to provide a source for this information or did you just read it somewhere ? Define very sick was it a couple of days, a week, a month in hospital ? I’ve provided a source you haven’t.
@WCS: it’s nothing about down playing the virus it’s about adding perspective to the constant fear mongering reporting being put out there, and letting people come to their own conclusion not just base everything on fear, it’s doing more harm than this virus will ever do
@Dannys Dentures: yeah a whole 10 people but hospitals and health service still not up and running 100%
@Thornto84: it’s on worldometers if you cared to read it
@Macca Attack: sorry but don’t see it anywhere, care to send the link ?
@WCS: there isn’t any clear evidence either way yet .
They don’t know if it’s post viral fatigue or if the sequels will resolve or not as not enough time has passed , if the sequels are from the disease or PTSD . As several health ministers in Europe have stated these reports must be taken with due caution as the data is not robust nor enough research has been made . So the general advice is to wait until data is certain and researched properly. I think that’s wise advice .
@Thornto84: and in other news, over 7 billion people – yes 7 billion – didn’t die in road accidents today. And of those injured, many recovered yadda yadda yadda.
So why are these news sources only reporting road accidents – especially those causing death?! Is it something to make us fear driving?!
Or is it, perhaps, that they are giving us information we need to stay safe.
Where is this sense of “constant fear mongering” coming from?! Why doesn’t it apply to “fear mongering” around road accidents? Cancer? Suicide?
And how, pray, tell, should the media report on something dangerous without being accused of “fear mongering”?!?!??? Should all reports start with “7 billion people didn’t die from this today”?
@Deirdre O’Byrne: another one that missed the point, the story reports approx 16m cases when that’s not the case so why report it, why not report that there approx 5m ACTIVE CASES ? Why insinuated there’s 16m cases ? But you seem to be happy with media outlets reporting half the story, good for you and last time I check we weren’t being bombarded about car accident pandemic, were we ? People like you can’t take small bit of good news or perspective for what it is.
@Thornto84: actually 16m cases is probably an underestimate.
You seem to be saying that car accident injuries shouldn’t be reported – only *active* injuries should be reported, because when the media reports the total injuries they are “reporting half the story”?! That makes *no sense*! Seriously!!!
And maybe, just maybe, the reason why we aren’t being told about a car accident pandemic is because it doesn’t fit the definition of a pandemic?!
And where is the good news about approx 5m active cases? You complain about fear mongering, yet such reporting is considered “good news”?!?!??
Finally to perspective. So what you are saying is that every report about car accidents should contain the disclaimer “but *your* chances of dying in a car accident is X”? Is that something that is actually needed? Are people incapable of figuring out the correct perspective for themselves?!
Are you?
@Deirdre O’Byrne: what the does car accidents have do with it thought it just an analogy you were using but you’re still going with it bit weird really. Yes there is more than likely more case but at this very moment in time there is approx 5m ACTIVE case not 16m that’s the total since day one. Which head line would be more accurate
and sound better; “Number of coronavirus cases worldwide hits 16 million” or “Number of active coronavirus cases world wide hits 5,687,966 with 5,621,808 in mild condition” pick one but I think I know which one you’ll pick, you seem like a glass half empty sort of person. FYI the the good news is the fact around 99% of the active cases are only mild or would prefer all of them were serious to say I told you so !?!
@Thornto84: I know someone who got it was close to death. Pulled through with colostomy bag forever more as reminder.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: sorry to answer your last question someone clearly has to give people like you perspective because you just missed the whole part that approx 99% of the active cases are mild condition instead you just focus on active cases, maybe you just see what you want to see
@Tom Ripley: I’m very sorry to hear that and feel bad but that person, but unfortunately it doesn’t change the numbers posted above. The comment is in relation to the wording of the headline nothing to do with the seriousness of the virus, not exactly right that it insiuates 16m cases when there’s only 5m active cases
@Thornto84: actually it is you who is coming across as trying to put your head in the sand by cherry-picking what should get reported. There are NO OTHER dangers or disasters where the number of people currently being affected is the metric reported. Yet you want this metric used for this event. Every other disaster it is the total number of people affected that is reported. Whether that be road accidents, earthquakes, or pandemics.
I fail to understand why you are incapable of maintaining perspective when “more than 16 million people affected” is the figure. There are over 7 billion people on the planet, and whereas this is a new disease which, if let out of control could have a devastatingly historic impact on humanity, the fact is that we know how to protect ourselves, and we are doing so. And the total number of people who are going to die is probably (hopefully) going to be less than the 1.35 million or so people killed in road accidents worldwide every year.
So why are you having such difficulty maintaining perspective?! I just don’t understand it!!! “16 million people affected”, in the context of a population of over 7 billion, is (so far and hopefully will remain so) nothing to get totally worked up over. So what is the problem?!??
@Thornto84: actually the figure for mild cases is 80%. But – so what? 99.999% of car journeys are safe, yet you don’t see that figure being reported either, in spite of the fact that car journeys are probably going to kill more people than coronavirus this year. Why is it that when 99.999% of car journeys being safe isn’t reported that you find yourself “losing perspective”?!
@Deirdre O’Byrne: few questions since you just dont get it. Is what I said right or wrong ? Did I present false facts ? Is there currently 16m infected with covid 19 walking the planet right now, based on known figures ? Has nobody reovered from this virus ? Care to offer a source for the 80% ? Do you not think it is right for people know how many have recoved from this virus ?
@Deirdre O’Byrne: for my own curiosity do you mind offering me a source or proof how pandemics are reported ? Also you be throwing around a lot of assumptions there, care to share where they came from it just your own opinion?
@Thornto84: whether what you said was true or false is beside the point. The point you were making is one of lost perspective because coronavirus is reported *exactly the same way* as *every other disaster*. The reports talk of 16m cases, but you say can’t maintain perspective unless those reports (uniquely) also give smaller figures like number currently infected. Why do you need coronavirus reports to give those smaller numbers in order to maintain perspective, yet you have no problem maintaining perspective when road deaths, earthquakes etc are reported in the usual way? May we please concentrate on that particular point of yours, as I cannot understand it, and I’m curious.
@Macca Attack: They say paper never refuses ink but this takes the biscuit. The overwhelming majority of people who need observation in hospital have recovered and do not having long lasting effects. Like any other respiratory virus, a small minority will need time to get back to normal and good health and an even smaller minority may have long term respiratory damage as they would with any other serious virus or infection of the lungs. Just be honest professor Macca, you just made that up to appease your own hysteria.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: So you didn’t answer one of my questions and but cares about facts, only person here that’s looking to twist figures to suit what you want is you, where’s your proof about that’s how they’re reported, and 80% figure you threw around? But you know what the big difference about the way you say it should be reported is that car accidents and I can only assume you mean deaths from an earthquake is that that an accident or a death can’t be undone where as a person catches this virus they can recover, hence we have figures for recovery and unfortunately deaths figures, where as accidents happened and can’t be undone.
@Deirdre O’Byrne: For you to say that this disaster should be measured as the same as any other disaster is complete bull as people can recover from and hence change that figure. At the end of this is when that figure is most relevant when it will be said X people were infected with this. Also they used to report the recovery figures but you must of given then advice on that said it’s wrong. I’m sure you’re a very smart person but you’re coming across a very bitter person suggesting that we should never know what the recovery figures and nobody should mention it. Maybe offer some proof in you’re argument too when someone asks, you couldn’t even answer 1 of my questions. I suggest you move on now you’re not making any sense
@Thornto84: I’ve answered all your *relevant* questions – the only questions I haven’t answered are those which are attempting to deflect attention from the “issue” you raised. And would you like to say how I’ve “twisted” figures (if it’s relevant)? And as for car accidents and earthquakes – most people who die in those disasters *die from their injuries* – injuries which in many cases can be survivable if they happen to be treated quickly enough etc. People can recover from car accidents and from buildings falling on them just as they can recover from a virus. Good grief you are really grasping at straws!
Now would you care to expand on your point by, once and for all, and without deflection, and without risible analogies about people recovering, explain why the way disasters are normally reported doesn’t lead you to lose perspective but the same reporting on covid does. Do you accept that the reporting on disasters doesn’t usually come with caveats about “your chances of dying from this are X” or “most people will recover” or “the number of people currently affected is X” etc? So why is it that, when covid reporting follows the well-established pattern, you lose perspective?!
@Deirdre O’Byrne: Listen you’ve clearly lost the run of yourself and I dont even think you know what you’re talking about at this stage, let alone anyone else, rambling about car accidents and earthquakes and comparing it to catching and recovering from a virus. You haven’t provided me any proof or sources that I asked for to back up your statements and opinions, that’s just what they are opinions and statements nothing else. Now I’m done embarrassing you so I’m going to move on now, you bore me now.
@Thornto84: listen you’ve clearly lost the run of yourself and I don’t think you *ever* knew what you were talking about. You haven’t answered simple questions about how you came to your conclusions, instead deflecting with irrelevant nonsense and then trying to call me out when I don’t take the bait. It is irrelevant whether the serious injury rate is 99% or 80% when the “problem” is that the injury rate isn’t part of the usual reporting on the issue thereby contributing to “loss of perspective”. Now I’m done embarrassing you so yes, I think it’s time to move on.
China’s gift to the world. Boycott Chinese goods only weapon we have to fight their tyranny. It worked against apartheid South Africa.
@Raymond Dennehy: of course the so-called “Spanish” flu of 100+ years ago originated in the U.S. What measures should people have taken against the U.S. for *that* monstrosity – which killed far more than covid 19 will. Or is it just Asians who should suffer when a virus arises there?
Vietnam are doing the right thing
So do all the people who still think it’s a hoax reckon the North Korean leader is now part of the big conspiracy?
The salient issue is that the virus can be ‘crushed’ as sone scientists have put it.
But the resources are not put into doing that
Ireland Heading for Second Covid-19 Wave
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/21/irel-j21.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/25/pers-j25.html
@PV Nevin: Work Socialist Website lol
I am sick and tired. Yes number of cases is 16million. But can you put it in context. How many people recovered? What is the actual percentage have died? Where have most people been infected? Shed some light please… I know this is a tough time but please enough of the gloomy headlines
@Caoimhín O’Cheallacháin: I went through those figures above and basically got attacked for it, people don’t like actual facts and perspective these days the scarier the headline the better it seems
@Caoimhín O’Cheallacháin: this pandemic is a very complicated issue, and so there are many “contexts” involved. The big big context, however, is that if this pandemic were let loose, it would have massive and long-lasting negative effects on humanity. So if you find the headlines gloomy, take true solace in the fact that the pandemic isn’t (quite) loose, though there are a few places in the world which are of concern. But as things stand, as I said above in a different thread, it looks like (fingers crossed!) this damn virus will claim fewer lives than a typical year of road accidents.
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