Moorland / Wildfires 2019

[Carl]

Thought I would start this one off as I suspect this year could be very similar to last year. In GMFRS alone we have started with multiple pumps on grass fires and I suspect this weekend will be a busy one too. The only saving grace is I am currently on annual leave

How about your services, are you experiencing the same and are you expecting this year to be another difficult one?

[Lumie]

There's a nice big patch of grassland right at the bottom of my station ground, and then the rest of that grassland extends to the neighbouring stations ground. Apparently last summer my crew spent most of their shifts on it putting out grass fires.

Looks like I'm going to be joining the grass fire gang this summer

[Becile]

Yep...we've had a few reasonably large ones, the fuel loading is pretty high now and the conditions are pretty much set for a busy period.

Just in on Surrey fire Twitter feed . as I type

Crews from across the county and assistance from @Hants_fire are dealing with a fire on Chobham Common, we currently have 4 pumps, 10 4x4's, 2 Unimogs and 2 Water Carriers in attendance

Knowing the common as I do this will.probably get bigger - access is difficult, hence all the 4 ×4s water supply is rubbish - hence the x2 ,x18 000l water farriers, and there is high fuel loading. 

[Bob]

As expected with the current spell of weather, cold dry easterly winds turning into a warm South Easterly at this time of year is providing ideal conditions for wildfires with potential for increased fire intensity due to the low RH and higher temps.

We have had several multi pump wildfires in Lancs but we are starting to reap the benefits of our new suppression burn team working alongside our Wildfire Tac ads we are starting to put together a sound response to the wildfires and hopefully reduce the scale/resourcing of the Incidents which we saw last year. 

I do think its pertinent to remember that the fires at this time of year are primarily surface burning so we wont have the long drawn out incidents of last year however it wont take many more weeks of this dry weather and we will start to see the sub-surface fires again and then its a whole different ball game. 

Fingers crossed we get the intermittent westerlies which will clam things down a little. 

ATB

Rob