IT WAS A VERY busy night for Dublin Fire Brigade last night – it dealt with over 600 calls, 200 fires, and 250 incidents that the ambulance services attended.
Halloween is always one of the emergency services’ busiest nights of the year, and in Dublin last night the fire service received between 20 – 30% more calls than 2013, one member told TheJournal.ie.
The scale of the work DFB was doing was highlighted on its Twitter page, where it kept a real-time update of what was going on in the city.
This morning, the full scale of last night’s activities was laid out:
One of the biggest fires it fought - and is still fighting – was at the Swords industrial estate. By early morning there were two pumps still out there.
The blaze was so big that large volumes of smoke were edging close to the flight path of Dublin Airport. Luckily, the fire did not affect any incoming planes.
The black smoke snaking out of a fire at O’Devaney’s Gardens in the Smithfield area, meanwhile, could be seen in Dublin city centre.
The Irish Fire and Emergency Services Association pleaded with the public not to attack or harass emergency services staff. In Dublin, that call was heeded – there were no reported injuries or assaults to fire crews last night.
In Cork, there was not the same scale of calls, a fire service spokesperson said, with no major incidents reported. This was mainly because bonfire night takes place on a different night in Cork – and on that night there would generally be hundreds of calls to Cork’s fire brigade.
However, a fire in a restaurant in Blackrock was brought under control – this incident was not related to Halloween. This fire broke out at about 5.40pm and five pumps were called to the scene. There were no reported injuries.
A spokesperson from the garda press office said it had no major incidents to report from last night.
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