Busy week for local fire brigades

Mitchelstown Fire Brigade attended to a shed fire in Kildorrery on Sunday last at 5pm, in which Mallow Fire Brigade also assisted.

The fire was described as a substantial one, taking the brigades approximately three and a half hours to put out, with a lot of damage being done to the shed.

It is understood that the structure was an old farm building, possibly inhabited at one time but was being used for storage at the time of the fire.

On that same day, the Mitchelstown brigade received a call out to a house fire in Ballylanders at 7pm.

The Mallow and Mitchelstown crews then split to attend the call, both sending half of their crew. Being in the Limerick district, Kilmallock Fire Brigade assisted in the call out.

The fire was not a major one and was caused by a washing machine within the house. No injuries and no fire damage was reported. However, an amount of smoke damage was noted.

ASSIST

On Thursday last, the Mitchelstown brigade performed an ambulance assist at approximately lunchtime for an elderly man who had taken a fall, while on Friday morning, the Fermoy brigade received a call out for an ambulance assist for an elderly man in Glanworth.

Two chimney fires were attended to by the Fermoy crew during the week, one in Watergrasshill and the other in Carraignavar. While one was an ‘ordinary’ callout for a chimney fire and took approximately twenty minutes to put out, the other was more complicated.

According to Fermoy Fire Station officer Eric Dahill, this fire was caused by a ‘poorly fitted stove’.

“You should always have a registered fitter when fitting a stove in your home. In this case, the flue was not brought all the way to the top of the chimney resulting in a chimney fire,” officer Dahill said.

In this case, the homeowner was lucky from the perspective that the fire itself did not cause major damage. “They were lucky that the room to the back of the fireplace was a bathroom, but quite a lot of damage was still done because of having to knock through a hole in the wall to clear out debris left from the fire,” officer Dahill explained.