Power and internet links shut off as fires ravage moorland
Emergency measures put in place as huge multi-agency effort made to battle blazes
Published:
Hundreds of residents in Wester Ross and the Western Isles suffered major computer disruption yesterday.
Their power and internet links went down as part of emergency measures surrounding two huge moorland fires which ravaged moorland at Garve.
The fires, on either side of the A835 road to Ullapool, broke out within hours of each other on Tuesday afternoon and raged until yesterday morning.
The blazes prompted a huge multi-agency effort to extinguish the fires, which included shutting down power to the area for several hours.
As a consequence, radio mast sites provided by Thus had to be shut down, affecting internet users as far afield as the Western Isles.
More than 60 firefighters battled the fires which threatened homes and a railway line.
Twelve fire teams and 25 Forestry Commission staff, as well as a helicopter which water-bombed the worst-affected areas, worked for more than 24 hours to extinguish the fires.
Jean Bailey, 63, who lives at Myrtle Cottage, Garve, one of the homes threatened by the fire, said she had feared losing her home.
Mrs Bailey, a retired secretary, said: “It was horrific. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
“The flames were only about 40 yards from my house.
“I would have lost my house if the firemen hadn’t been here dampening down the grass.”
Six firemen and an appliance spent nearly six hours damping down the area surrounding her house to prevent the fire from crossing the nearby railway line.
The first fire took hold at Northhill Garve, close to Little Wyvis, at 3pm on Tuesday. And just 2
At its height the fire front was three miles long. Almost 900 acres of land was affected and remained scorched by the flames yesterday.
David Jardine, forest district manager with Forestry Commission Scotland, said: “They were both what we call ground fires or a surface fire.
“Forestry staff and the fire service worked extremely well together.
“At Northhill we stopped the fire from getting into mature trees. Only one tree was burned, which is amazing.
“On Southhill it is mainly birch, which was burned, but it is very robust. Two-and-a-half acres of two to four-year-old trees were killed.”
Mr Jardine said they were still investigating what had caused the fire, but they were not yet 100% sure.
John MacDonald, of Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service, who was acting as incident commander yesterday, said he thought the two outbreaks so close together was coincidence.
Fire crews who fought the fires came from Dingwall, Beauly, Inverness, Drumnadrochit, Invergordon, Boat of Garten, Kinlochewe, Dornoch, Cromarty, Bonar Bridge, Balintore and Dornoch.
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