Wildfire Season

[Keith]

I've started a new thread for all you Eng-er-land fans, you lot behave and get this one back on topic.?

[Steve]

22 hours ago, Carl said:

Hope you treat yourself to a new keyboard when you retire.

I clearly didnt have my 'head in the game' when I was typing.... too busy listening out for cheers/groans from the living room. Thankfully I built up the courage to go back in for the last 5 minutes and the penalties and of course I'm glad I did... although I had physical chest/arm pain watching it.

[Bob]

I have been involved for the last week up at Winter Hill supporting the NFCC Wildfire Tac Ad's  and the number of other FRS attending has been phenomenal. A well organised structure through the Enhanced Logistics vehicle which organised the SHA and mobilised from there as requested. The London pumps set off home from our STC this morning around 1000Hrs and they were a great set of people and I met a few of them up on the moors including a giant called Paul Askew from Soho .

The amount of support we have received from volunteers again has been amazing and the provision of tracked vehicles and water application modules has been invaluable. When I asked MRT to track the perimeter it was coming in at just short of 18Km which is an area of 771 Hectares.

I have attended many large moorland fire over the years including the largest in recent memory of Anglezarke in 2011 but when these 2 fires merged the area of fire has become unprecedented for our area. The long term damage is untold but with this being a water catchment area and SSSi in terms of water treatment and animal habitat it may never recover. 

I've got plenty of memories from this incident and hopefully will help strengthen our Wildfire response for the future. 

ATB

Rob

[Steve]

Our turn, as predicted... 15p grass fire behind Feltham Fire Station (Just South of Heathrow Airport). Serious enough for the airport to switch landings from Runway 27L to 27R

[Becile]

See our Unimog was requested by LFB...hope it was helpfull.

[Firestorm]

18 hours ago, Steve said:

Our turn, as predicted... 15p grass fire behind Feltham Fire Station (Just South of Heathrow Airport). Serious enough for the airport to switch landings from Runway 27L to 27R

Is that the urban farm?

[Messyshaw]

@Firestorm

Think is was the fields to rear of the urban farm. There's quite a bit of Heathrow Ariel mast stuff there which must of been a worry 

[Aspire]

Following the 15 Pump grass fire yesterday, another notorious one has gone up. Wanstead flats in East London is currently alight and the Commisioner is on scene, as is @Steve, as it is now a 30 Pump Fire. Not to mention, we have 3 over the border in Essex at a 15 Pump grass fire in South Ockenden. 

With 1 or 2 other bits requiring senior officers, London are down to just 3 SM’s for the 620 square miles at the moment. A weekend normally see’s about 21 or so on duty as a minimum.

Aside from senior officers, we currently have 104 resources committed to incidents, 83 of them are pumping appliances.

[Messyshaw]

Facebook post that this has gone to 40!!  Is this true - and is Steve on duty?

Edited July 15, 2018 by Carl
Quote removed and Link embedded

[Aspire]

LFB website says so, there was an immediate 10 pump relief on the bell so not sure if it was taking that into account?!

I’m resisting the urge to log on again! I believe Steve is on duty as I saw his call sign attached.

[Messyshaw]

Just seen Steve posing on FB at the job!! I think the FIT guys should speak to him

[TandA]

And to stretch it a bit more Essex had a km by km of scrub alight at South Ockendon.  That was 15 pumps including 3 LFB from East London. Thought I might have seen Steve there but only bumped into Hornchurch 

[Steve]

I was ordered onto the 40pf at 15. They ordered a 10p relief when it was 30, but as it was then heading toward a petrol station and church and the HVP relay was progressing slowly the AC actually made pumps 40.

100 hectares but the surrounding risk was phenominal, there isn't a house bordering Wanstead Flats that is less than around £800k. I only had one very lively and worrying sector (initially on my own as a recce) but it pretty much appeared to be 20 pumping and 20 relaying until we ran a HVP main all around the triangle that makes up Wanstead Flats (from a lake in the SE corner) that allowed ti to drop to a 20p relief and now a 10p rolling relief while its dark.

Wanstead Flats is savage as it is very difficult underfoot, its peat so burns under you and we'll be there for days. There have been a few 10's and 12's over there previously, but this was vast and at one point seemed to be creating its own wind current spreading by wind in several directions as well as a thermal burn in other directions. An awesone way to end, 5 shifts left, bring it on.

As well as 4 LFB motors in the end OTB in Ockenden Essex, There was a 4pg up the road in Woodford a 3pg in Dagenham and a 4pg in SE London. Several multi call fires, that attending crews 'kept to themselves' in recognition of the day we were having. One call in Stratford was attended by two from way out East, one from WEst Hampstead in NW London and one from West Norwood right down past Brixton in S London. Also, a rare occurence for LFB, we had Essex and Kent machines coming in on initla calls to East and SE London, a lively day to say the least.

[Carl]

10 minutes ago, Steve said:

An awesone way to end, 5 shifts left, bring it on.

Having known you personally for nearly 20 years now, I know you are soooo going to miss all this. ?

[BurtMacklin]

That burning peat doesn’t half warm up the steel in your boots! it took me ages to work out why my feet were getting hotter when I’d gone back to the truck to take on some drinking water ?

[Dan J]

Busy busy busy here. We’re getting a fair bit of fires in open / wildfire at the moment, which is also depleating fire cover and resulting in a fair bit of standby cover for us as well.  

Last week we went to a fire on Hartlebury common and spent about 2 days there.  Had a fair few minor fires In open as well.

Thursday we were called to standby at Kidderminster at 15:00, but within 2 mins of mobilising we got redirected to fire in open in our local area, which was 10 m of trees, undergrowth, fencing railway sleepers, tar and plastic. We put that out and got sent to standby, dealt with a car fire while out, then by 2100 the crew were back so we could leave. Got back home at 22:20 just in time for the phone to ring, control saying we’re needed at 23:20 for reliefs at a wildfire. Worked through the night and got home at 06:00 Friday morning. 

At at the same time there was also had a lorry fire on the motorway going on which contained a load of straw, which was protracted and went on all day.

Fair to say I wasn’t going in to work at 9am after a 21 hour working day the day before ?

[Luminoki]

4 minutes ago, Dan J said:

Last week we went to a fire on Hartlebury common and spent about 2 days there.  Had a fair few minor fires In open as well.

We were waiting to leave a job ( 20 acres of standing corn well alight that went to mp6 along with 4 specials ) when we heard the first mp2 message. By the time we got back to station it had gone to mp4, guessing the peat was on fire?. The water carriers at Evesham and Leominster have had a busy time of it recently

[Dan J]

Yes we were going to standby and heard the MP2. We were 18 miles away and could see the smoke plume ? it was peaty, the fire had gone down into the ground. The terrain was really rough and thick plant growth. 

All three carriers were bombing round the county on Thursday, Leominster’s was in Kidderminster, Ledbury on the motorway, and Evesham were heading out towards Leominster. Totally mad how busy it is. 

Edited July 21, 2018 by Keith
Quote of post directly above removed.

[Matt]

Had a field fire up here on Friday, MP4, then MP6 and ended up as MP10.  Crop ready to be cut, just went from one end to the other in less than an hour.  Stripped the county of appliances, nearly lost 3 appliances and 1 lost its hose reels (truck is only 6 months old!). 

We are desperate for some rain around here, cannot take much more of this.  

[Firestorm]

I'm on leave. Burn baby, burn.

Seriously though, take care wildfiring.

[Luminoki]

Met up with one of our lates crews ( who go to the secondarys on their BRV ) at a training session on saturday, at the height of it, they had spent a total of 47 minutes on station out of a set spanning 4 days of 12 hour shifts