Retailers are to be urged to suspend the sale of disposable barbecues due to recent wildfires.
Disposable barbecues have been linked to a recent blaze in Co Kerry which began on Tuesday.
A source in the Department of Enterprise confirmed that the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management would be asking retailers to voluntarily suspend their sale.
On Wednesday, Gardaí and forensics investigators were examining the scene at Killarney national park where they suspect a deadly wildfire ignited on Tuesday afternoon.
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Over 20 hectares of wild habitat including blanket bog, heather and woodland were destroyed. However some of the park’s rarest wildlife was saved after the fire was brought under control early on Wednesday.
Divisional manager with the NPWS, Eamonn Meskell, said lessons had been learned from the April 2021 fires which laid waste to several hundreds of hectares in the same area.
A joint response from the local authority, the NPWS, Gardai and the fire service swung quickly into action this week. “We could have lost an awful lot more,” Meskell said.
Signs have been erected throughout the area warning against lighting barbecues and fires. The ledge on Cromaglan Mountain, about 50 feet above the N71 where the fire began, offers spectacular views of the Killarney lakes and the Eagles Nest mountain opposite, and could be seen as ideal picnic spot.
The trees in the adjoining Tower wood and Derrycunnihy that were saved are the last remnants of extensive oakwoods in Ireland and among the most ancient in Europe.
The fire broke out at around 5.30pm and is suspected to have been caused by a disposable barbecue.
Fire services from Killarney, Kenmare, Sneem and Killorglin, as well as conservation rangers and other personnel from the NPWS fought the blaze for six hours before bringing it under control shortly after midnight.
They were assisted by two Galway based helicopters contracted by the NPWS.
The N71 main Killarney to Kenmare and Ring of Kerry Road remained closed for almost 24 hours and the smell of acrid smoke hung over the area.
However flare ups on the charred mountainside were continuing, including a large one in the woodland area not long before the road reopened at 3pm on wed.
Helicopters worked continuously, scooping 800 litres of water per flight from the lake and dousing vegetation.
Conservation rangers at the scene said there would have to be extreme vigilance for days to come given the dry condition of the brush and heather.
Minister of State with special responsibility for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity, Christopher O’Sullivan said the fire was not a “natural disaster” but had been caused by human activity.
He said he took a “zero tolerance attitude” towards people lighting fires in national parks and wild places.
“For days, the National Parks and Wildlife Service has been battling fires, including incidents believed to have been started by the reckless use of disposable barbecues. This is utterly unacceptable,” the Fianna Fáil TD said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Lighting fires or using disposable barbecues in a National Park or any wild area is not carelessness, it is gross irresponsibility – especially during a heatwave. It is a crime against nature, against local communities and against future generations who have the right to inherit these precious landscapes intact.”
O’Sullivan said people should “leave these places as you found them or better, and leave no trace”.
“As Minister for Nature, I take a zero-tolerance attitude towards lighting fires in our national parks and wild places. The damage to biodiversity, wildlife, livelihoods and public safety can be – and too often is – catastrophic.
“My heartfelt thanks go to the NPWS staff, firefighters and emergency services who have worked tirelessly, often in extremely difficult conditions, to contain this fire and protect one of Ireland’s greatest natural assets.”
Dermot Brannigan, the chair of the Chief Fire Officers Association, encouraged the public to remain “mindful, vigilant and careful” when out in natural habitats during the current warm weather and to be conscious of the impact of human actions.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland in reaction to a number of fires in counties Kerry, Cork and Westmeath, Brannigan said most of the fires had been accidentally started, with people discarding glass or disposable barbecue sets not being extinguished and discarded properly.
“The message that we need to get across this morning, and for the next number of weeks during this lovely fine weather spell that we are having, is that we be mindful and be vigilant and be careful when you’re out in our natural habitat, and be conscious of the impact that it can have.”
Most local authority fire services have responded to a significant number of gorse fires in the last number of weeks due to this prolonged spell of dry weather, he said.
“It is anticipated that if this spell of dry weather continues, that we will have to respond to a number of similar types of calls, albeit that most of these incidents are relatively small and localised in nature, involving predominantly gorse and grassland,” he said.
Brannigan explained that with prolonged periods of dry weather, the susceptibility to fire increases. “I would be mindful that Ireland is not like Europe in many ways, or central Europe. In our vegetation generally, the sap rises between maybe March and May, which is probably the most vulnerable periods for the fire service, gorse fire periods.
“A prolonged period, and I’m speaking in periods of several weeks, can intensify the ignitability of gorse or wildland, and then hence cause the fire very quickly. And I think the upland nature of any particular fire, or prolonged exposure to fire, can intensify very quickly. So wind, heat, all have an intensifying factor in relation to fires of this particular nature.”
