Ballyhaunis man is a Hurricane Harvey hero

RESCUE EFFORT Danny Carroll from Ballyhaunis was part of a vital rescue effort in Houston, Texas after Hurricane Harvey.

Edwin McGreal

A Ballyhaunis man was behind a mission to bring a stricken Irish cancer patient in Houston, Texas, to hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.
Danny Carroll (30) arranged for a friend of his to use his truck to ferry Shauntelle Tynan (19) from her apartment to a hospital in the city despite flooded streets in the Texan city.
Shauntelle is undergoing specialist cancer treatment in the US but had to wait for rescue from her apartment after five feet of water surrounded the complex.
The situation was becoming critical.
But a timely break in the weather arrived which reduced the flood water levels and allowed Danny Carroll to get a friend of his to navigate his truck through the flooded streets and into Texas Children’s Hospital.
Shauntelle’s mother Leona Tynan told Today with SeΡn O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1 last week that Shauntelle was the first person through the doors of the hospital in two days so cut off were people from the building.
It soon became clear how pressing Shauntelle’s medical needs were, as her mother explained.
“She was really lucky to get there when she did. Her platelets, which is the clotting factor in your body, when it gets to 20 it’s critical that you get a transfusion. Her platelets were below six. She had a platelet transfusion immediately,” explained Leona Tynan, who expressed her gratitude to Danny Carroll and his friend Charles who helped get Shauntelle to hospital.

Relieved
“We were just beyond relieved. The emergency services were overwhelmed. We were starting to panic because Shan’ was really needing to go to hospital at this stage,” she said.
Danny Carroll is a native of Carrowreagh, Ballyhaunis and a former student of Scoil Íosa National School and Ballyhaunis Community School.
He’s the second eldest of five children of Cathal and Cathy Carroll. Danny was in the Irish Air Corps, based for six years at Baldonnell. He is based in the USA for six years where he works as a Maintenance Planning Manager for the Global Operations at Bristow Group in Houston.
He married Houstonian Alli Bujnoch last April and the couple have an 11-month-old son, Rowan.
A former footballer with Ballyhaunis, Danny is involved with the Houston Gaels GAA Club in the city and was honoured as Club Person of the Year last year.
His father Cathal said that volunteering is something that comes naturally to Danny.
“He would never be looking for thanks. He just does things like this naturally. From a parent’s point of view it is lovely for people to come up to you and say ‘you’ve a great bit of stuff there’. He’s a real grafter,” Cathal Carroll told The Mayo News last night.  
Aged just 17, he was a volunteer at the Special Olympics World Games in 2003 and also volunteered at the World Games in Beijing in 2007.
His father explained that Danny has spent the last three days volunteering at the NRG Centre in Houston, the headquarters for much of the relief effort in the disaster-hit city.
He and other members of the Houston Gaels club have been helping the Tynans since they arrived in Houston last February, arranging transport and supports for the family.
Shauntelle Tynan was diagnosed nearly two years ago with a rare form of multi-system Histiocytosis X/Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH).
Shauntelle raised more than €700,000 (£594,000) after fundraising appeals went viral to allow her family to cover at least a year of potentially life-saving care in Houston.