A bit scary tonight...

[Kleiber]

Our forest (about half a mile up the mountain from my farm) has been ablaze tonight. I'd like to say to anyone who thinks it's "fun" to light fires in grassland or forest in these dry conditions - it's not! Not only do you destroy the wildlife, but you put other peoples' livelihoods in jeopardy (have I spelled that correctly?). My poor sheep were going absolutely ballistic as the thick smoke swept over my farm. Thankfully, our local volunteer firefighters have damped the blaze down now & it seems to be under control, but I won't sleep very well tonight. The guys are brilliant and I'd like to say a big "Thank You" to all the firefighters all over Britain who are dealing with this menace right now!

[dotty.]

There have been peat fires across the west penine moors since the weekend, the one at Angelsark has really been bad and at the weekend the smoke was blowing right into Chorley town and it was not nice to breath in.

[ttfn]

Hear hear, Kleiber. Our fire fighters do a tremendous job. I am glad your sheep are safe.

[DTCwordfan]

I will "third" that and anyone who commits such arson is "baa-nanas" and should be locked up for a long time with the keys thrown away. Same goes on in the S of France each summer.

[welshlibranr]

My son is a firefighter, he's got it hard at present, working really hard to put out these fires, sad that they are mostly started on purpose!............

[Kleiber]

Aw, dotty - hope you're OK. Thanks, ttfn - sheep have calmed down a bit now, but are still a bit jumpy (wooly jumpers, ha ha!), poor girls. Even the dogs were weird tonight and all the cats came in early - like they wanted to feel safe, indoors.

[starone]

How awful for you kleiber and how frightening. People who start fires like this are mad.

[slinky.kate]

my sympathy goes to anyone near they fires it must be real scarey,i know when i lived in australia(out in the bush)you got done for throwing cig'ends away and lit matches,

[lady-janine]

sorry to hear of the trouble you are having. agree that it is not even faintly amusing or clever to start fires as they can do so much damage especially when they are peat based and can travel underground. all best thoughts are with you and all the firefighters whever they are..xx

[Kleiber]

One of our firemen is our Postie - poor lad is on the post all day & then has to go out & fight fires at night. I'm just gutted that this may have been started deliberately - what sort of person does that? I should know, as I spent years in fire investigation in London, but I still can't understand the mentality.....

[Carakeel]

Oh Kleiber, that is dreadful!! I hope you are safe and will remain so with all of your animals! People can be so careless at times, I know! They are saying though that some of the fires around Britain are due to the dry weather, not necessarily people being stupid. None-the-less, I hope you are OK.

[Kleiber]

Thanks, everyone, for your kind replies - you really are a lovely bunch of people! K xx (and the animals!)

[ummmm]

I've only just seen it on the news!! Can't understand the mentality behind it.

[Kleiber]

Zeb - you said it all. We don't have a full-time fire brigade up here, they're made up of our postman, the butcher, a couple of other farmers and a car mechanic! Yes, they all deserve medals!!

[wolf63]

Fire is something that we will never be able to control - it's like a wild animal. These idiots are either careless of callous and can't see that what they do will become an uncontrollable force.

I hope that you and your animals are all okay K.

[redcrx]

worrying stuff Kleiber, i hope they managed to put it out ok with minimal damage. There are no end of grass fires etc here too at moment, but we have prats setting light to wheelie bins all year round which also risk lives.

Mr CRX is also a retained fireman, on call 24/7 every day of year. Its hard sometimes when hes been at work all day and alerter then goes off as soon as he gets home etc, but he does love his job, as they all do and we should be glad of people like that.

He took a well earned day off at the weekend, 6 hours off call to have a family day away from the town (when on call he cant be more than 5 mins from station) and ended up spending 1hr of that tending to a motorcyclist who had come off his bike and into a ditch.