SHEER MADNESS
Fire crews run the gauntlet in Halloween call-out hell
SHOCKING video footage has emerged of emergency service personnel being shot at with fireworks as they attended an illegal bonfire on Halloween night.
Footage from Ballyfermot, in west Dublin, also shows gangs of youths shooting fireworks at each other in a residential housing estate in videos shared on social media under the joking title of ‘Warzone’.
Attacks on emergency service staff have become ‘normalised’, according to John McNally, acting district officer at Finglas Fire Station, who has been working with Dublin Fire Brigade for the last 25 years.
‘I’ve had cars driven at me. I’ve had rocks thrown at me. I’ve had bottles thrown at me. I’ve had fireworks fired at us through homemade rocket launchers… and directing them at us, anything goes.
‘There were a couple of attacks [on staff] on the night. I’m not trying to normalise it but that is normal. It happens,’ he said.
On Tuesday night, a fire crew was attacked with rocks by a gang of youths in Tallaght, who thought the crew were there to extinguish their bonfire. However, the emergency services were responding to a medical emergency after a woman collapsed in a house.
Darren O’Connor, sub-officer at Tara Street Fire Station, explained that in some cases the emergency responders have had to withdraw from areas – where they had been called to help someone – for personal safety issues.
‘We shouldn’t have to be tied up putting out a bonfire where we could be attending something else. In Tallaght we were responding to a medical case when we came under attack and sometimes we have to withdraw for that reason and that person could be in urgent need of our assistance.
Mr O’Connor has seen the horrific injuries people have been left with after messing with fireworks or being intoxicated in the vicinity of a bonfire.
‘Digits blown off, partial amputation of fingers, bad burns, loss of eyesight… I’ve seen someone lose their eye after a make-shift banger went off on him.
‘We’ve had costumes that have gone on fire. At 3am or 4am you could have adults running across bonfires, across a pile of roasting hot embers, and of course they don’t make it.
‘A lot of the costumes people wear are cheap and cheerful, but they’re not made from fire-retardant material. They’re classed as toys so they don’t have to conform to the same safety standards,’ he said.
Dublin Fire Brigade extinguished just two bonfires on Halloween night, out of an approximate 100 or so that were lit across the city.
‘From experience, you would know that there would be certain areas that would over the years be problematic.
‘We do a dynamic risk assessment. If the fire isn’t causing any threat to anybody – if it’s in an open area – we’ll just drive off and leave it. They [the public] can call it in 20 times but we still won’t put it out, because it’s too risky.
‘It’s a risk-benefit thing and if the risks outweigh the benefits we won’t touch it, simple as that,’ Mr O’Connor added.
One of the fires extinguished in Ballyfermot was done at the request of gardaí and there was a heavy Garda presence at the scene.
Overall, the number of calls to Dublin Fire Brigade was down from 292 last year to 229 this year.
It’s hoped that the increasing popularity of council-run events – which include firework displays, live music and haunted houses for children – will reduce the numbers of illegal bonfires and as a result the demands placed on the already overstretched emergency services.
‘Culture is a very hard thing to change but I think it is happening slowly,’ says Mr O’Connor.
‘If it’s in the open, we’ll drive off, it’s too risky’