Fire service prepare for bonfire night in Cork city as council host non-fire events

The fire service is preparing for what could be one of their busiest nights of the year, as the council is encouraging people to attend their Non-Fire Night celebrations across the city on St John’s Night.

Ger Ryan, third officer at Cork City Fire Brigade, told The Echo: “There’s been a markable decline in bonfire callouts progressively over the last three years, but unfortunately we’ve seen an increase in deliberate fires in derelict premises, so we’ve been very busy in recent years with malicious call outs on top of bonfires.

“Gardaí deploy a unit with one of our bonfire crews to support us.

“We’ll have regular staff on plus people coming in on overtime to cover extra callouts, because you just don’t know what will happen — there’s a few factors, the biggest one is the weather.”

He added: “We try not to be spoil sports; if there’s a bonfire supervised by adults and they’re burning non-toxic materials we can turn a blind eye, but we do get a lot of medical complaints from people.

“So if the smoke is interfering with someone’s health or is too close to properties, we have to put it out.

“We try to speak to groups, say ‘don’t put any domestic rubbish on it, no tyres, gas bottles, paints or solvents’ — that’s the dangerous stuff that we’d be concerned will do damage,” Mr Ryan told The Echo.

Cork City Council is supporting summer fun days in Knocknaheeny, Mahon, Togher, Mayfield, The Glen and Farranree, branded “Non-Fire Night” celebrations.

“The city council has put an awful lot of effort into these social events right across the city, so we’re hoping to get fire engines out to a few of them to show the kids,” Mr Ryan said.

Fianna Fáil councillor Tony Fitzgerald was recently told that there were approximately 37 illegal bonfires across the city in recent years on June 23, annual clean-up costs for which are €7,500 approximately, though the council added that this is a considerable reduction on 10 years ago when “more than 80 large fires would have been lit”.

Mr Fitzgerald told The Echo that the non-fire events have “had a big impact on reducing the amount of fires, and local children nowadays generally attend fun events in their local parks rather than attend unauthorised bonfires”.

He suggested that a “protect your green area” campaign would help further reduce bonfires, whereby communities would get investments in new trees and flower beds for their park spaces to discourage people from lighting fires there.