FARMYARD RESCUE FIREFIGHTERS SAVE 72 PIGS THAT FELL INTO SLURRY TANK
MORE than 70 pigs have been saved from a slurry tank on a Co Antrim farm in the biggest animal rescue in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS) led a team in “arduous” conditions yesterday to save the animals.
The operation lasted nearly seven hours on a farm at Ballinderry Road in Aghalee.
In total 74 pigs were involved, and 72 were saved.
Six fire appliances attended the incident, along with a specialist rescue team and a large animal rescue team.
The pigs, weighing over 100 kilos each, fell into the tank when concrete sections gave way.
Farmer Nigel Grant thanked firefighters their work in rescuing his livestock.
“We had a good outcome, out of all the pigs in the tank we lost two,” he told Q Radio.
I can’t praise the fire brigade enough.
“There’s an old saying in this country, whoever owns the cows in the drain will pull hardest on the rope; well today I saw the fire brigade men pull hardest on the rope. They didn’t own the stock, but they pulled very hard today on the rope.”
NIFRS Group Commander Geoff Somerville said in terms of numbers it was the largest incident of this scale they had ever attended.
“It was very arduous conditions, firefighters were working using breathing apparatus and immersion suits, they worked in teams of three to rescue the pigs,” he said.
“I would like to pay tribute to the work of the crews and everyone in attendance, it was a great result. We thought we were going to be dealing with a much worse situation.”
He told the BBC: “The slurry was approximately 3ft (0.9m) deep and our crew were using dry suits and breathing apparatus, with gas-monitoring equipment in place.
“We were then using lines to pull the pigs from the slurry tank, using a sloped grate that we had set in place.”
Mr Somerville urged the public to be careful when working on slurry tanks on farms due to the dangers posed.