{"id":583374,"date":"2026-08-04T23:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T23:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/583374\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T23:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T23:16:09","slug":"its-been-terrifying-locals-say-action-needed-in-wake-of-dublin-mountains-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/583374\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s been terrifying’: locals say action needed in wake of Dublin mountains wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

LOCALS IN GLENCULLEN are calling for the establishment of a new taskforce to oversee how wildfires are tackled as they have been left \u201cterrified\u201d by ongoing blazes close to people\u2019s homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A local councillor in the area, Michael Fleming, said that volunteers from around the Dublin mountains area assisted Dublin Fire Brigade in battling the fires since they first broke out, and again yesterday and throughout today after they reignited.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said that now the fire brigade, the Office of Public Works and Coillte, the State-owned forestry company, need to come together in the form of a taskforce aimed at coordinating how agencies respond to wildfires.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"fires\"
\n Fires broke out in several different locations in the Glencullen area.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had seventy men out here on Friday evening for hours, helping firefighters move water hoses, working to put out flames with shovels, and that joint response meant that the flames did not reach anyone\u2019s houses. However, there were around eight different homes that were really nearby the flames, and that posed a significant risk to those people,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fleming added that high winds saw reignited fires being blown towards the forest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it had spread there and beyond, hundreds more people would have been put at risk. We know that the weather is going to be getting hotter and hotter each year, and so now we need a more proactive response to this, because this was terrifying for people, and the smoke has been horrendous,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fleming said that \u201cjoined up thinking\u201d is needed now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s people\u2019s lives at risk here. There\u2019s people\u2019s livelihoods at risk,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Antoinette Pim is in her 60s, she lives in the area with her mother, who is in her 90s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said that her mother was so afraid of the fire over the weekend that she had packed her passport and her will into a bag and put it into the car in case the two women needed to escape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Journal<\/a> \/ YouTube<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the terror of it, we have neighbours who were evacuated, and that woman was in an awful state too. Even on Sunday night we did think that was it, we went to sleep, and then I got a call very early to ask if I\u2019d looked out of the window, and it had started again,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pim said that a management plan for the area is needed to ensure that blazes can be prevented and tackled quickly in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is taking ownership of this. I don\u2019t know which agencies are involved, I know that there are people who have land rights to different areas of the hill. Everyone needs to come together to sort this out because otherwise there could be a fatality in the future,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Darren O\u2019Connor, district officer with the Dublin Fire Brigade, this morning said that a change in wind direction yesterday brought the fire uphill and caused it to spread further.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not right for people to be terrified in their homes, the destruction to the land is horrendous, and as well as that, there\u2019s a huge cost to fighting these fires, helicopters have been overhead on and off today, and that is seriously costly,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that it is not clear how the fire started.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have an exact cause of it, but they generally start near pathways and roadways, but it\u2019s impossible at this stage to say what the source of this ignition was,\u201d he said on RT\u00c9\u2019s Morning Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that this summer has been particularly busy for firefighters as the weather has led to a number of wildfire outbreaks, and that hot conditions have been difficult for firefighters to work in.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOCALS IN GLENCULLEN are calling for the establishment of a new taskforce to oversee how wildfires are tackled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49785,34724,207511,246235,61,60,43,8769],"class_list":["post-583374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-coillte","tag-dublin-fire-brigade","tag-dublin-mountains","tag-glencullen","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583374","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=583374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}