The Tinder Effect

The island’s fire service says it has used 70,000 litres of water battling two days of fires in Port Soderick.

After a call yesterday which saw crews battle a blaze in the Keristal area, Douglas crews were again called to Port Soderick this morning to deal with another field fire.

The fire service said: ‘Utilising an RIV (rural intervention 4×4 vehicle), 1 x Major pumping appliance, a water bowser and with the assistance of the Fire train  crews managed to setup a system of work to overcome the terrain to extinguish the spreading fire. 

‘To put that in perspective, and mindful of the Island wide hosepipe ban. Today’s incident took 45,000 litres of water to extinguish and dampen down and yesterday we used 25,000 litres. We had to run hose lines across the Steam railways track, which meant the trains had to be stopped.

‘If you haven’t already, consider downloading the free What3Words app, it will help you pin point your exact location when calling 999 for help!  It is tinder dry out there folks, with temperatures due to build through the week, please be sensible as a wildfire can spread rapidly in dry hot conditions.’