Looking back at last year...
It has been a busy year in Carmarthenshire. Here we take a look back at 2018 and the news we brought you over the past 12 months.
IN January, work started on a new link road that is hoped will ease congestion and help to bring ‘ much-needed jobs’ to the Cross Hands area.
While in Llanelli, the proposal of a bypass to alleviate air quality and traffic issues in Sandy Road would ‘not solve the problem; it would simply shift it’, according to Llanelli’s AM.
Lee Waters said he felt “desperately sorry” for residents and called on the Welsh Government to look into what has worked elsewhere in the UK and abroad, as he spoke at length about Sandy Road in Llanelli which is an Air Quality Management Area with known harmful levels of nitrogen dioxide.
Of a bypass proposed by campaigners, he said: “I don’t think this short-term fix would solve this, but what else are we offering people in this situation?”
February and March saw campaigns across Mid and West Wales ramp up to save hospitals and services with the Hywel Dda University Health Board announcing major plans to overhaul services. Campaigners were vocal about Carmarthen’s Glangwili, and Llanelli’s Prince Philip hospitals with community leaders vowing to fight.
A 12-week consultation got under way in spring and the findings were published in September by the health board.
Carmarthen’s Glangwili Hospital and Withybush in Haverfordwest will be downgraded and a new hospital will also be built in West Wales between St Clears and Narberth, while services will be maintained at Llanelli’s Prince Philip Hospital.
March also saw a huge fire rip through Carmarthen’s former workhouse, which famously has links to the Rebecca Riots.
When the blaze broke out, more than 20 fire- fighters were all at the scene and took almost four hours to get it under control. Two teens were arrested and last month Dyfed-Powys Police said the investigation is ongoing into the blaze, while the town’s civic society calls for measures to secure the building’s safety and save it from ruin.
West rocked Wales was also by a murder in March on a farm between St Clears and Laugharne.
Seventeen year-old Reuben Brathwaite was jailed for life in September for killing his stepmother, 54 year-old Fiona Scourfield at their family farm.
Swansea Crown Court heard he became “obsessed” with watching extreme violence online.
He used an axe and a samurai sword to kill her before trying to upload pictures of her body to the internet.
March also saw the tragic death of two-yearold Kiara Moore just days before her birthday, when the car she was in rolled from its parked position into the River Teifi Cardigan.
Kiara was left in the front seat of the Mini for just two minutes while her mother, Kim Rowlands, called into her family’s riverside outdoor pursuit business in Cardigan.
A two-hour search took place with her parents initially believing the car had been stolen. An inquest into her death heard how police officers waded into the freezing river in an attempt to save the little girl.
The same month also saw heartbroken friends and family who helped to raise more than £100,000 in a bid to save a young Llanelli mum in her cancer battle have announced her wishes for the fund.
Nicola White, aged 33, died in February after a massive fundraising campaign for her to receive life-prolonging proton beam therapy treatment.
The remainder of the funds will be used to help others also affected by cancer and those needing palliative care, as well as some being given to her husband Alex and two children, Owen and Ava. The Save Nicola fundraising campaign raised more than £100,000 for the mum of two.
May and June saw parts of Llanelli plagued by an infestation of flies.
For days the reason for the flies remained a mystery with home owners’ lives becoming a misery, with windows and doors having to be kept closed, despite the warm weather.
It took council officers working with a private pest control company 16 days to identify the source of the infestation on June 7. The flies began appearing in Morfa and Tyisha areas, but later spread as far as Burry Port and Bigyn.
The metal processing plant AMG Resources Ltd in Nevills Dock was found to the likely source a meeting at Carmarthenshire