District Officer with Dublin Fire Brigade Darren O’Connor, who is an expert in wildfires, says they have been very intense fires and on a very large scale with black and scaring where all the vegetation has been burnt away.<\/p>\n
Listen: Helen Donohue reports from Glassamucky Mountain <\/p>\n
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n He says these fires are also very resource intensive.<\/p>\n He says for the first two weeks of July, Dublin Fire Brigade dealt with over 20 significant incidents, classed as wildfire, compared to 11 over the same period last year.<\/p>\n He says these fires are also very resource intensive.<\/p>\n He also says that as more people are out enjoying the outdoors with parks opening up, everyone brings their own risk with them.<\/p>\n “As more people start using the outdoors we have seen an increase. Fire services have been tackling gorse and grass fires in several other counties, including in Cork, Laois, Kildare and Dublin.”<\/p>\n He said that once a fire starts in these types of areas, it can be very difficult to access them.<\/p>\n “If a fire starts on the bottom of a hill it will accelerate rapidly uphill.<\/p>\n “It’s really difficult to get water. This area is not served by hydrants. It is very difficult to actually challenge the fire, so you go for indirect tactics, either creating fire breaks or bringing in helicopters and doing an aerial attack,” he said.<\/p>\n Species impact<\/p>\n In Kerry, Killarney National Park lost some 22 hectares due the wildfires which started a week ago.<\/p>\n Divisional Manager at Killarney National Park Eamonn Meskell said there was a lot of damage but the damage could have been a lot worse.<\/p>\n Not only did they lose some habitats, they also lost animals and birds which were dependent on the habitats – some of which will take decades to return.<\/p>\n Among the animals and insects that have been affected are deer and bees.<\/p>\n “We found the honeycombs which were fried by fire and the honey had melted, and the combs themselves had burned. So that was impacted,” Mr Meskell said.<\/p>\n![\"Forest](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0024bfa3-614.jpg\"\/)
\nFirefighters say that if a fire starts at the bottom of a hill it can accelerate rapidly uphill<\/p>\n