Falling wall units land on girl while she does the dishes

A STUDENT has spoken of her horror after she was nearly crushed by a falling kitchen cabinet and trapped beneath the debris for up to 25 minutes as firefighters attempted to free her.

• Kirsty Ireland was injured when the cabinet fell off the wall.

Kirsty Ireland was washing dishes with her two flatmates when the kitchen unit fell from the wall and landed on top of her at her flat in Marchmont yesterday.

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The 20-year-old Edinburgh University international relations student injured ligaments in her wrist as she tried to prevent the crockery-filled wooden units falling on to her.

Flatmates Jill Davidson, 19, and Sophie Watson, 19, narrowly avoided being trapped in the tiny back-room kitchen on Lauderdale Street when the units forced the door shut, with Jill cutting her feet on the glass that shattered on the ground.

Ms Ireland said: "I opened the cupboard and the next thing I knew the entire cabinet came away from the wall on top of me. I could feel the stuff from the shelves dropping on to me and I was trying to stop the crockery and glasses falling on to my face.

"Jill dived out of the kitchen and the door slammed behind her and the shelves practically buried me inside.

"I became trapped against the wall, with the entire kitchen unit on my thighs. I was trying to hold it up with my hand, which had been forced right back by the weight."

Ms Watson, a politics and Spanish student at the same university, phoned 999. Two firefighters arrived around ten minutes later, but had to request the help of five others, in another appliance, to get to Ms Ireland.

She said: "The firemen didn't want to smash through the door with an axe, but in the end they did it carefully, although the axe was coming through the door as they were hacking the panels right by my head."

Ms Davidson, a social policy and law student, said: "It's hard to imagine how it happened but it was quite frightening at the time. I didn't even realise my feet were cut but there was blood everywhere."

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Both Ms Ireland and Ms Davidson were taken to the ERI to be treated for their injuries.

A spokeswoman for the fire service said the freak accident was difficult to describe.

She said: "It appears the occupants had become trapped under a kitchen unit which had fallen off the wall. Our crew couldn't get into the kitchen and so had to force entry.

"Seven crew and one officer used tools, similar to joinery equipment, to break up the debris and extract the girl."

The students moved into the second-floor flat in September, just after it was renovated.

Ms Ireland said: "We think it might have been a botched job because the units just came straight away from the wall."