Experience made us twitch. A quiet Friday night and Storm Dave on Saturday left us expecting a busy Sunday.
We was right we was …
Early evening glimpses of groups walking in to woodland. Two fires in BoleHill / Lawrencefield before 9pm. NT Longshaw Rangers dealt with the second of these.
This was the third night that we have had Damian (the new BMC funded Wildfire Engagement Officer) out with us. As his patch includes the Stange North Lees Estate he was taken on a ‘Stanage By Night’ tour and quite quickly saw 2 vehicles parked on moorland near Dennis Knoll and then found and dealt with 5 people having a fire in the woodland. They were invited to leave and the fire site extinguished.
As we were heading back along under Stanage (and Damian headed off at the end of his full shift) we noticed lights in the top of the Plantation. The drone quickly confirmed a fire there
and then detected a second fire along Stanage Edge.
When told by drone to extinguish the Edge fire the bright sparks that had lit it decided to kick the lit logs off the Edge and in to the bracken moorland below. Bright people. DFRS were called and a joint patrol sent out to find the logs (helped by the thermal drone) and soaked them.
We all then moved along to the Plantation fire site, invited those 5 to leave (they stated that despite the nearby presence of a DFRS fire engine and car and being spoke to by Rangers via the drone) that our response was ‘all just a prank’, and hadn’t moved at all in the preceding 90 minutes. They too were invited to leave. We then soaked that fire site.
Five fires in total. Four of these were in dry old woodland and had the potential to cause large fires therein. The other saw lit logs kicked down on to dead bracken – again with the potential to cause fire in the landscape.
By which point it wasn’t far off 1am.
Happy Easter 👍🙄