Mountain Blaze In Snowdonia

Not to trivialise the main thrust of this article, that is the spate of moorland fires in the dry weather, this article has been presented in a sensational and misleading manner.
The title clearly creates the impression that firefighters were airlifted to safety after risking their lives to put out a fire. Not so at all, they were airlifted simply to save them the hour and a half walk back; which is a good thing but not the same thing at all.

Posted: 30/04/2007 at 23:23

Was in area on Sunday, saw burnt out moorland just outside Bleanau Ffestiniog, was that the blaze in question?

Posted: 01/05/2007 at 01:11

Nothing "sensational and misleading" about this article at all.

What the article does not mention is that at the time of these two fires there was a third, a house fire in Blaenau Ffestiniog. (We know because we were asked to send an ambulance to the house fire)

The crew at the first fire were airlifted out to the grass fire at Blaenau Ffestiniog so that the firefighters there could move on to the house fire.

To have a crew working 1.5 hours from their appliance is NOT conducive to good fire cover and has nothing at all to do with "saving the the walk back!"

Before attempting to trivialise such decisions, one should really consider the difficulties of providing potentially LIFE saving fire cover in rural areas and the drain such grass/mountain moorland fires have on such rural areas, and not compound the already poor journalism which appears to be as ignorant of the operational difficulties.

The ambulance services have their drunks diverting resources from REAL life threatening emergencies, the fire services have their mountainside fire bugs!

Posted: 01/05/2007 at 09:50