Delamere forest fire warning

DELAMERE Forest is on alert to catch serious fires before they take hold after a series of small blazes in the area.

A spokeswoman for Forestry England said the sprawling beauty spot has suffered incidents that may be linked to social gatherings taking place at night and leaving litter dumped on the ground.

The Weekly News contacted the organisations after catastrophic blazes turned swathes of forest in Dorset and Anglesey to ash in the last week despite it still only being May.

Forestry England has upped its levels of vigilance and is urging the public to ‘#BeWildfireAware’ also.

In Dorset on May 18, 220 hectares of forest went up in smoke, and in Anglesey on Monday, May 25, firefighters spent 18 hours to tame the flames of a serious woodland blaze.

Further afield, wildlfires wiped out the town of Paradise in California, USA, in 2018 claiming more than 85 lives, with press outlets reporting figures of between 85 and 88.

According to a Medical Journal Of Australia study, the country’s deadly bushfires of 2019-20 killed 417 victims due to smoke inhalation, more than 10 times the 34 killed by the fire itself.

In a statement to the Weekly News, the Delamere Forest spokeswoman said: “We have already (unfortunately) had a number of small fires at Delamere Forest.

“Whilst these fortunately haven’t been on the scale of some of the larger fires reported in other parts of the country, the continued dry weather does mean we have a heightened fire risk.

“Our staff generally have a heightened awareness and response available during dry and high fire risk periods.

“We are currently using our website and social media channels to help people #BeWildfireAware – particularly as Delamere Forest has peat-based soil so even if someone thinks they have put out their fire, it could well continue to burn under the ground out of sight for some time, and then fire reoccurs.

“So we’re asking people to not use barbecues or light fires and to put out and dispose of cigarettes properly. And we have posters on site reminding people about the fire risk.

“We’re also receiving reports that people are going in to the forest at night time to have social gatherings – we believe this might be where some of the littering (including disposable BBQs) we’ve seen recently might be coming from our teams are currently looking at identifying known ‘hot spots’ for fires and antisocial activity and working with the police where they believe these incidents are happening.”