Alex Rang ….

at 1538hrs on Friday. The call is logged as lasting 22 seconds.

Eighteen of them were Alex shouting..

TOMOTHERESAFUCKINGFIREATFROGGATTFROGGATTISFUCKINGALIGHTFUCKINGHELL

the last 4 seconds were me saying ‘where exactly’ and him replying, ‘i’ll message you’. 

And he did. And he sent this grid

SK 24951 76509

and this photo 

of the beginnings of the Froggatt Fire. 

I’ve dealt with a few fires previously, they’re not uncommon around some of the activities Armed Forces participate in, and i’ve put out or ‘persuaded’ people to put out dozens and dozens of them on the moors hereabouts, but this was my first landscape wildfire as a volunteer with the Eastern Moors.

If you’re after an in-depth guide to firefighting read no further. This is mostly about anything other than firefighting …

I was informed that 999 were already aware. I messaged the patrol rangers whatsapp group and rang the Land Manager then drove ‘quite quickly’ to our base on Big Moor. Along the way i shouted FUCKING HELL to myself very very loudly as i saw smoke billowing up from Froggatt. 

People were donning orange fire retardant suits and i didn’t have one and was stood in nylon walking trousers and a shirt. That was a problem. Thankfully some swapping took place and now i may have looked like i knew what i was doing but the illusion stopped there. 

Kit was loaded. A deployment plan discussed. We were off.

Off to the access gate to the Edge off the A625. We rolled an Argo-Cat (an 8 wheel skid-steer all terrain vehicle) off its trailer (next to a fire engine that was way too big to get up the track) and drove it up the track for maybe a mile.

What followed was quite surreal and a bit of a blur. I got to the ‘Incident Control’ and was told that ‘they needed the fogger up there’ with fingers pointed at the very obvious fire. My colleague Sam jumped in beside me and we drove across the moor to what was effectively the left hand edge of the fire. The fire was fanned by a northwesterly. The left hand edge was where the fire was trying to gain hold of the moor. 

We drove past a few firemen who waved us along the line to a point where one of them asked us to tackle the fire there. The Argo-Cat has a 300 litre water tank, a pump and a high pressure lance. Sam stepped out the Cat and got stuck in. The fire was no more than 1.5m away. It was a tad hot. We took turns. 

We chatted later that day about a ten minute segment of the next half hour in which, firstly, we were hammering the fire line with water then moving along it leftwards only to see the bit we’ just soaked back up in flames, and secondly, a few minutes later, we found ourselves asked to pursue the fire as far SE as it had travelled only to look back and realise there was no one near us and the fire was burning towards us. 

We quickly learnt that fires are unpredictable and that situational awareness was paramount. 

Have i mentioned the heat ? Our colleague was flying a thermal drone and recorded the temperature along that fire line we were on as 142 centigrade. 

Alongside us on the line were professional firefighters. Having arrived at a gate that was way too small for their vehicle they were flagged down by a volunteer colleague of ours called Craig, bundled in to his Suzuki and driven to the fire line. Needs must.

The landscape that was alight was ‘ours’ in so much as we bunch of paid and volunteer rangers collectively spend thousands of person hours per year looking after it and the land around it. I think that deep connection to this land made our commitment to it a bit different to the professional firefighters there. For us this was personal.

Something that will stay with us is Craig. On a wildfire site with all that that entails, and after being first on scene ferrying firefighters in his car, Craig was wandering round the site in his shorts and his sun hat and his trainers desperately looking for wildlife to save. Wildlife first. That was the mindset. I took a photo of him like an apparition in the smoke looking for his beloved adders and lizards and anything to save from death … like a World War Two General surveying a battle scene. He just need a pipe int’ mouth.

For us there was a when not if about the inevitabity of fire here. 

We had contained the fire on its left flank and the main footpath along the Edge had contained it on its right. However it had managed to spread in to Gregory’s Field enclosure and so, now accompanied by another two Argo-Cats, we drove in to the enclosure and attacked it from all sides. 

Within three hours the firefighters and rangers had it under control. 

2.5 hectares (25,000 square metres) of the moor was burnt to death. 

Whilst we were fighting this fire a ranger at the roadhead informed us that he had found another recently discarded barbecue that was still warm in a field close to the road. Food still on plates. Coals discarded on to the earth. Maybe they were having a barbecue watching a wildfire ?

We set to work soaking the margins of the fire so it couldn’t grow. The pressure was off.

The ‘welfare’ delivery from the Fire & Rescue Service had consisted of bottled water and energy bars. The latter had the texture of wood chippings. This Army couldn’t march on wood chippings …a phone call to Sally who owns The Grouse Inn was made and shortly thereafter Craig switched from delivering firefighters and saving nature to collecting 15 portions of chips. And wine bottles filled with cola. Apologies to the folks that saw what looked like us lot smashing Pinot Grigio whilst the moor smouldered. 

Thanks Sally.

Night fell and it looked quite surreal with whisps of smoke rising from hotspots all over the burnt area. When there are fires on peat they burn down in to the ground and if not detected and cooled (if possible) that heat can and does reignite the surface sometimes weeks or months later. (There’s a bit of a clue to this characteristic in that peat is still dug, stored and burnt as a slow-burning fuel on fires in many countries).

A couple of the senior officers left Incident Control (which had relocated to HayWood earlier) to come and have a quick look for a source of the fire. The FRS subsequently posted on social media that a broken glass bottle was the ‘most likely’ source. 

The firefighters left at 9pm. I left after 10pm. My colleagues left after midnight. Many areas of the moor were still very hot through a thermal. 

My colleagues and the firefighters returned at 6am on the Saturday. I was on my way when i got reports of a rave in a small woodland (which is incredibly rich in flora, fauna and home to bird species like yellowhammer and spotted fly   catcher).

The Eastern Moors Team is a very small one that has 34 square km of land to manage and care for). I’m not suggesting the ravers knew we were otherwise engaged at the fire a few miles away, but it did seem odd that on probably the only Friday night of the year that the wood wasn’t visited by patrol rangers and or ecologist volunteers there was a rave. Coincidence ??

I had a walk through the  carpark and the woodland. Probably fair to opine that their idea of recreating on a nature rich protected landscape is different to mine. 

I went to our Base and then collected an Argo which was trailered back to Froggatt and driven on to site. Essentially the next 11 hours or so were spent hotspotting with the necessary movement of resources (Argo’s, UniMogs, fuel dumps, water tanks, drinking water etc etc that that required). 

About 9am ish we diverted from the site to attend to a credible report of someone cooking breakfast on ‘a large open stove’ futher along the Edge. In doing so we dented a wheel on an Argo which reduced our fleet down to one for several hours whilst a repair was effected. 

With the risk of reignition now further reduced the firefighters returned to their stations after lunchtime. We rangers then continued through the afternoon and early evening with our two Argo’s. 

Earlier, whilst guiding us and the firefighters on to hotspots and helping to guarantee our safety on the site our drone pilot had to land the drone because another drone appeared in the airspace. We didn’t find the operator. Later that afternoon the pilot posted a photo on social media of the fire sight taken above and adjacent to it whilst the incident was in progress. I commented on the effect his drone over the airspace had had but because he couldn’t see any flames (but could see about 40 people, smoke and fire service vehicles) he stated that that was okay. As a drone pilot you need an Operators ID to fly any drone. To do that you need to read the CAA Drone Code. In there it says

Where was i. We were done on site for that day and retired to The Grouse for a cold drink. And a chip butty. Unaware of what we looked like and how we smelt. Like coalminers with a serious hygiene problem.

We were sat in the sun recollecting the last 36hrs when a  couple next to us asked if we had been extinguishing a fire. We made ourselves out to be Hollywood wildfire heroes having saved our 2.5 hectares when they casually chipped in with … ‘yeah we’re both from California .. we see a few wildfires’. 

A few hours later we met the same couple at Surprise View and they came over and said ‘we ordered our first ever chip butty because of you three …. with brown sauce’. Winner winner chip butty dinner. 

On our way back to our Base we spotted some vehicles high up on the Houndkirk. After we had turned our kit round we drove up. There was three vehicles and three humans and a dog and a barbecue waiting to be lit on moorland. A conversation about not having a BBQ ensued. Whilst people more diplomatic than me had that chat inwent for a wander and found a builders merchants size bag of firewood under the back of the camper. They were then told to leave. 

EMP staff returned to the fire site on day 3 again to heatmap it and soak any hospots before leaving site but leaving a water resource (that looks like an orange paddling pool) there. Water is scarce and heavy and that resource enables increased mobility on our part. We also pieced together the very first picture of the fire relative to now to aid our understanding of exactly where and how it started.

A few other observations …

If your dog is off the lead hurtling around the ground nesting bird habitat that hadn’t been torched whilst you stand there photographing the scorched area and moaning about the damage to wildlife, you might need to recalibrate your conscience. Dogs off leads are a greater harm to wildlife on the Eastern Moors than wildfire. 

I was a bit busy during the fire and the following day so i didn’t get to speak to more than perhaps a quarter of walkers and cyclists passing by but 99.9% of them opened the conversation with ‘how did it start ?’. None of them enquired about the damage to nature and habitats. A few people asked if it was ‘just nature’, ‘had the moor just got too hot’. Quite a few people took a while to comprehend the response that ‘we’re absolutely certain the moor didn’t set itself alight’. 

If it was my train set i would have closed the Froggatt Edge path, but i am advised that even with a wildfire in progress the legalities around closures are exhaustive. 

Apparently a good way of knowing you got too close to a wildfire is if your eye brows get removed by the heat. Still got mine. Must try harder next time. 

I’m sat here now with the Eastern Moors Land Manager chatting about what i call the ‘America Lag’ … we both know that the UK  urgently needs to address wildfire risk properly and appropriately resource a capable 24/7 response. Like America has. But it won’t. Until in 10-15 years time when the loss of people and property as a result of wildfire is commonplace and its hand is forced (and then it will take a further decade to evolve and resource). The response here in the Peak District National Park is overseen by the Fire Operations Group and a large part of that is still a ‘ringing round your neighbours’ asking whose about and can lend a hand. Other than EMP rangers and Derbyshire FRS crews the only other person i saw getting stuck in was Tom from the farm on Stoke Flats. He was very grateful when handed a bowl of chips on Friday night. 

I was going to end the post with a timely and appropriate comment by Alex (who first gave us the heads up about the fire) that he texted me later on the Friday …

‘This is why we can’t have nice things, we just ruin everything’

but he got usurped by an event just as we were leaving the site early on Sunday afternoon …

between 1140 and 1200hrs someone heading past the fire site towards Curbar Gap threw their Costa Coffee cup our Argo AWD vehicle because they couldn’t be arsed carrying it (how much does it weight empty 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️), we’d like to send them our best wishes. 

Thirty five of the last forty five hours on site saving Froggatt Edge and the moorland around it from a fire – possibly caused by littering – and we get used as a waste receptacle. 

Cheers folks.

Postscript

1600hrs Sunday – a few spots fanned by the NE wind have surface temps of >160c. Back out with the Scotty Pack …

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