Tractors and tankers used by local farmers to help tackle wildfire
By Bairbre Holmes, Press Association
Local farmers have described using their tractors and tankers to help tackle the large wildfire burning on a Co Tipperary mountain for the last four days.
The blaze broke out on Slievenamon, in the south of the county, on Monday and by Wednesday it had spread to an adjacent forest.
Since then, firefighters, with the assistance of the Air Corps, have been trying to bring it under control.
Speaking to the Press Association on Thursday, Tom Morrissey said he and other local farmers and contractors have joined in efforts to control the flames.
“We took action there to go up and start watering with tractors and tankers,” he said, adding it is a “scary” situation for those with adjacent farmyards.
They also worked on maintaining and tidying firebreaks to stop the spread of the blaze.
“In fairness to all local farmers and contractors around here, they all gave a hand out there last night to two or three o’clock in the morning,” he said.
By that time it had “died down”, he added, but by Thursday lunchtime it was “back up going again”.
His neighbour, Billy Tobin, said the flames were “travelling down at such a rate” on Wednesday “it looked like it was going to reach my house”.
His wife and two children went to stay with family, while with the help of friends and neighbours, he created a firebreak behind his house.
Borrowing a digger from the Morrissey family, he and a family friend “scraped back” the vegetation around his hillside home as a “precaution”.
Praising the “brilliant” local community, Tobin said: “Lots of people in the locality were driving tankers of water up there, like, imagine the courage that takes.
“They put serious work into the late hours last night.”
Local Independent TD Mattie McGrath said there was “huge angst and concern” in the area on Wednesday night.
He said “the farmers last night, the neighbours, got out with machines, with water tankers” and dampened paths and firebreaks.
Some of the tankers can hold thousands of gallons of water and “they didn’t get much sleep last night”, he added.
