Fire crews prevent wildfire from reaching homes 20/3/13
Firefighters battled for six hours to prevent a wildfire from burning homes on Lewis
today.
Flames came just metres away from a string of houses in the village of Leurbost,
in North Lochs.
The stiff easterly wind whipped the blaze across a mile of heather in the middle
of the village, seven miles outside Stornoway.
Flames crept closer to houses and gardens and fire tenders took up strategic positions
to protect properties under threat, replenishing their water tanks from a hydrant
in the village.
Smoke engulfed the winding road causing traffic, including a school bus, to halt.
A large area of moor was destroyed by flames creating a plume of smoke which billowed
for miles across the interior of the island.
Lewis fire-fighting resources were stretched with crews from Great Bernera and Shawbost
called in to reinforce two appliances from Stornoway.
At 4pm exhausted firefighters had broken the fire into three sections.
Beaters were left to tackle two smaller blazes while appliances were focused on blocking
the main fire from getting closer to homes. Eventually, at the back of 7pm, the
blaze was extinguished.
One local resident said the fire came “very close” to her home.
She arrived back from work to find fire crews tackling the blaze.
The woman said: “Thankfully I wasn’t at home, otherwise I would have been freaking
out.
“The fire came pretty close to next door. That croft is black – it was burnt by the
fire.”
