The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS) received 303 emergency calls as bonfires were lit for the traditional Eleventh Night celebrations in unionist areas.<\/p>\n
In one incident firefighters withdrew from a fire in the Cookstown area due to what NIFRS said was a hostile crowd.<\/p>\n
In Belfast, the fire service dealt with a fire that had spread to a garage on Milner Street.<\/p>\n
NIFRS said that overall firefighters attended 151 operational incidents and 54 of these were bonfire related.<\/p>\n
NIFRS Area Commander Dermot Rooney said: “Operational activity was consistently high across the 11th night with an increase in demand for emergency response.<\/p>\n
“In Greenisland, Carrickfergus, Firefighters dealt with a row of terraced houses on fire, along with two oil tanks and a shed.<\/p>\n
“Two homes were completely destroyed with damage caused to a further two properties. The cause of the fire is under investigation.”<\/p>\n
Mr Rooney said that firefighters also responded to other incidents across the night, including accidental house fires in Antrim and Coleraine and an articulated lorry fire in Newry.<\/p>\n
“With further bonfires planned, we are prepared and ready to respond to all types of emergencies”, he said.<\/p>\n
“We would encourage everyone to stay safe and make responsible choices throughout the remainder of the bank holiday weekend.<\/p>\n
“With warm, dry weather continuing, we also ask anyone spending time outdoors to follow our countryside fire safety advice,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS) received 303 emergency calls as bonfires were lit for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-545524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}