The three-day fire which raged through the Killarney National Park since Friday night is finally being brought under control with five helicopters at the scene.
“Significant” damage has been caused to water quality as well as to habitat and wildlife, in the burning of thousands of acres of rare habitat both within and outside the park area, the head of the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the region, has said.
Long-term strategies to fight and prevent fires are being called for as well as more staffing and a tackling of long-term issues, outstanding with four decades since the last major fire, are being sought by conservationists.
Minister for Heritage Darragh O'Brien and Minister of State at the department Malcolm Noonan are visiting the scene.
Kerry's chief fire officer Andrew Macilwaith said air support had been key to bringing the fires under control as five helicopters – three Air Corps helicopters and two private including one from Scotland were at the scene on Monday. A fly over by the Coastguard Rescue 155 helicopter earlier had identified the fires left on Monday morning and the team spent the rest of the afternoon dousing the woodlands.
Asked why air support had been limited to just one helicopter on Saturday, Mr Macilwaith, said they had requested air support on Saturday, and one air corps helicopter was sent.
“We felt it was particularly bad yesterday and requested more,” the chief fire officer said.
On the ground 30 fire personnel from Kerry, joined by personnel from Macroom, had fought the blaze alongside wildlife rangers and operational staff of the park.
Meanwhile, questions are being raised locally as to why the county’s emergency plan was not activated on Saturday in a situation which saw one-third of the national park burned. On Sunday, the fire had spread beyond the park and into the Black Valley area of the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks threatening homes and property.
The divisional manager of the NPWS, Dr Philip Buckley, has said the fire was “by far and away” the most extensive ever in the park’s history and would have long-term consequences.
It had burned well beyond the park limits and rare habitats, designated conservation areas, dry and wet heath have been damaged and destroyed.
Ground nesting birds and young mammals had been destroyed, alongside habitats, but there would be long-term consequences including to the water quality. To what extent, the NPWS did not yet know.
“The only way to fight that fire, was to do it from the air,” he said.
The NPWS would be footing the bill for the air support, Dr Buckley confirmed.
Staff, including general operatives and rangers as well as management in Killarney were joined by others from throughout Munster over the weekend to fight it on the ground, he said.
The N71 road remained open while fire trucks and engines tried to negotiate their way to and from the fires. For most of the day firemen had to operate a stop-go system at the area of the Five Mile Bridge, along with tackling the fires.
The council has said it had kept the county emergency plan under review during the weekend.
Any investigation into the fire in the Killarney National Park must not be just about the cause but must address the real extent of the damage including air pollution as well as improved management of woodland, the Irish Wildlife Trust has said.
“At the moment the hills are being managed so they become inflammable. We need an emergency response,” Padraic Fogarty IWT campaign officer and the author of Whittled Away, a book which dealt with the lack of management strategy for Killarney National Park.
Annual fires, over grazing and infestation by rhododendron had meant Killarney National Park had ceased to be a functioning ecosystem, he said.
Mr Macilwraith said fire crews in the area were used to fighting "that sort of fire", he said, but the high-level fires meant that air support was necessary. "Without the private helicopters, plus the air corps, things could be a lot worse and we certainly wouldn't be as good as we are this morning," he told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland.
Mr Macilwraith also thanked the people of Kerry who “have been so good dropping up sandwiches and water to our crews”.
Mr Macilwraith said it was very hard to know what had caused the fire. “It might have been something as small as somebody had a small barbecue or lit a small fire or something and something happened and to think that a small ignition point like that when everything is so dry could just spread so far.”
The fire officer added that park rangers were delighted that fire crews “got in to protect the oak trees and they hope they will recover as they are some of the oldest in Ireland.”
The blaze is believed to have started at the southern end of the park, near the Long Range River off the N71 Ring of Kerry. Dramatic scenes appeared on social media of flames dancing into the night sky.
‘Tougher penalties’
Mr Noonan said tougher penalties for those who start fires will have to be considered in light of the devastation caused by recent fires in Killarney and elsewhere in the country.
The damage caused to biodiversity and habitats along with carbon emissions were all devastating, he told Morning Ireland.
There was no doubt, Mr Noonan said, that tougher penalties would be required to deter people from starting fires for agricultural purposes. The fire in Killarney might not be agriculture related, he said, but there needed to be consequences for those who set fires deliberately.
Mr Noonan said 50 new park rangers would commence work shortly which would mean “more boots on the ground”. There would also need to be a co-ordinated response by the Government this summer as more people would be “staycationing” which would require co-ordination of natural resources and parks.