A gorse fire burning near Roundstone in Galway. At least this fire is controlled – the person in the picture ensured it didn’t spread beyond the field where the fire originated. However, it is still illegal, since it was lit in mid-March. Driving home later that evening, I came across a another fire (albeit a small one) burning alongside the road and uncontrolled.
While walking along Salthill Promenade this evening, a couple of fire tenders drove past, heading west. In the distance, a pall of smoke hung in the sky. It’s illegal to set fires to burn off vegetation after the end of February and before the end of August. Unfortunately, it’s also difficult to get anything to burn during those dates, given the Irish weather. So most gorse or bog fires are lit out of season. The biggest problem isn’t the damage to the wildlife (as bad as that is). As I’ve written before, Irish bogland isn’t empty anymore – there are numerous forestry plantations and homes surrounded by bogland all along the west coast of Ireland, and uncontrolled fires pose a danger to them. Fires are much easier to light than to extinguish, and over the past month, there has been a spate of fires in Galway, Mayo as well as further south. Fire-crews from the city are often called to help put out fires far out west, which means less emergency cover for everyone else. It’s only a matter of time before there is a terrible consequence to this practice.
If you do want to burn a fire in a controlled and legal manner, the government have published a set of instructions, available here (in PDF).
An example of the nuisance factor of a gorse fire. This one occurred during the legal period (late September in this case) near Brandon Mountain in Kerry, but it sent huge clouds of smoke (and sparks) billowing across homes and homesteads.