Fire Crews Successfully Battle Major Gorse Fire In Glencree National Park Overnight

A large gorse fire in Glencree National Park kept fire crews on scene through the night on Thursday (16th), with a multi-agency response involving fire services, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), and Dublin Fire Brigade.

Bray fire station first attended the blaze at 2pm on Wednesday, with the scale of the fire soon requiring backup from Greystones fire station.

NPWS deployed a helicopter to assist with firefighting operations, while a Dublin Fire Brigade crew tackled the same fire from the Dublin side of the park.

Overnight, a crew from Blessington fire station took over monitoring and firefighting duties on the fire front, before all crews finally left the scene at 4am on Thursday, July 16th.

Second upland fire in a week

On Monday, (July 13th) crews from Greystones and Bray spent ten hours fighting a large fire on Coillte property in the townland of Deerpark in Powerscourt.

Coillte staff supported the operation with a water tanker and machinery to help contain the blaze.

The back-to-back incidents come amid a prolonged spell of hot, dry weather that has left the Wicklow upland areas at heightened risk of wildfire, with authorities continuing to urge caution around open flames, barbecues and campfires in forested and mountainous areas.

Michael Keegan, the chairperson of Wicklow Uplands Council says the causes aren't known, but he adds that he has a reasonable idea how they are started:

''In a lot of cases it's sort of inconclusive, but the one thing that is for certain is that somebody, in my opinion anyway, somebody starts these fires. You know, whether it's through negligence or on purpose is, you know, you could argue about that all day and it's very often it can be hard to ascertain exactly how it started.

But usually, like in a lot of cases there, you'll have people with these barbecues, which are an absolute disaster in my opinion. They should be banned because they bring them out from wherever they're living and they have their barbecue. It's then left there because it's too hot to handle or do anything with afterwards.

They can't bring it home, so they leave it there. I mean, that in my opinion, I would class them as stupid, selfish people. They're just not thinking.

Major Problem

''Those things shouldn't be allowed, shouldn't be done up in the uplands. It causes a major problem. Look at the amount of resources that's going into dealing with that fire and people, firefighters being put at risk and motorists being put at risk and then you have the smoke lingering around for weeks and weeks, you know, for whatever duration of the fire, plus all the damage to ground nesting birds and habitat and everything else.

It's highly irresponsible and selfish to bring stuff like that out into the uplands of Wicklow or anywhere and just, you know, without any regard for anybody. It's all, you know, all right, you have your barbecue and you walk away and you leave thousands and thousands of euros worth of damage and impact for everybody that lives in the area. Yeah, they do argue, I think, you know, particularly the shops that sell them, etc., that people buy them for their own back gardens and things.''

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