- 7 hours ago
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00:00So I've had to come up to Tarlacaroo to clear my head after a very long day.
00:06I was scheduled to be on a 12-hour shift today and I did my 12-hour shift but I
00:09was really lucky
00:10to be allowed away to meet the cabinet secretary earlier today. Needing to clear my head because
00:15what started out was really quite a positive day is certainly not finishing that way. Taking my dog
00:20for a walk and this is the current state of play over Glenmore. Obviously this smoke here is fresh
00:25today. This is a flare-up of the fire. It's a flare-up of the fire because the fire is
00:30not out,
00:30it is not contained as the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service senior leadership would like to try to make
00:35out. I'll talk more about that when I'm further around on my wee walk today. So first of all this
00:41is not about the boots on the ground. This is not about our volunteer crews, our retained firefighters,
00:47our whole-time colleagues who have come along on pumps to be boots on the ground fighting this fire.
00:53They have worked tirelessly, they have sacrificed time from their families, they have sacrificed time
00:58from their primary employers if they are volunteers and retained and that has a massive impact on the
01:04wider part of our community. The biggest factor to date that has limited the scale of this fire,
01:12being even more obscenely large than it is in the heart of the National Park, is the amazing community
01:19response. It is the volunteers, it is the contractors, it is the estate workers that have come from miles
01:28away. I'm aware of people who have taken unpaid time off work to come and volunteer at this incident
01:34and the number of those probably equals if not dwarfs the number of firefighting boots that have been on
01:40the ground. At times they have gone above and beyond. They have worked in hours of darkness when other
01:49entities would not commit staff into those environments and they have done that to protect the businesses of
01:55this area and the wildlife and the landscape that we all love and cherish as local residents.
02:03It's obvious from the donations that have come in overnight since Sandy McCook who is the chair of
02:13our neighbouring community council over at Neffy established a GoFundraiser, a GoFunder to raise funds
02:20to provide more welfare for the volunteers and the crews. I think the total for that when I last looked
02:26was
02:27well over £30,000. In 24 hours that's been generated. I think that shows the appreciation
02:33for the boots on the ground, the estate workers, the contractors, the firefighters, the volunteers who
02:41have come along and worked beside landowners to do their utmost to do that. And I am absolutely indebted
02:48to them as is our community moving forward. But the big problem is the fire isn't out, the fire isn't
02:54contained. And the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service seemed to keep thinking that it's okay to put the
02:58same narrative out to say, yeah, yeah, we're on top of this, we're on top of this. We ain't.
03:04So the big question is, how do we move forward? And in a way that's what today was about.
03:09Today was a closed door meeting, deliberately so, away from the media, without the fire service present,
03:14where local elected representatives, business representatives, landowners came together to
03:25have a frank and open conversation with one of the cabinet secretaries. I left that meeting actually
03:32really quite positive. I felt listened to. We put our points across very clearly.
03:39We put our frustrations across very, very clearly. What I find incredibly demoralizing is when I
03:48left my work tonight at half past seven, I see a stream of messages and calls relating to the conduct
03:55of officers on the ground. Officers, not the boots on the ground, who have conducted themselves in a way
04:03which I think is actually unbecoming of the service that they represent.
04:08And actually risks demolishing the relationship between community and the fire service that has
04:18managed to hold this where it is. I just spoke about how Sandy had done a GoFundraiser
04:26to generate money for welfare support. Welfare support that Nethy Bridge community has put huge amounts
04:34of voluntary hours in to provide food, respite, space in their community hall at their expense. Now,
04:45the same person was ejected from the community hall where he has been the
04:52intrinsical link to create the support for the fire service, along with others. Not only that,
04:59as a community leader, he was told he has no right to information updates about the event.
05:08We are supposed to just believe the narrative that is put out through the social media posts of the
05:14Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. And unfortunately for those of us that have worked with a lot of the
05:20people that are on the ground, we know that they're not accurate. So the big challenge now is when we
05:26have this knowledge, what do you do? How do you go and challenge and how do we manage to build
05:31this
05:32relationship to actually get on top of this fire? So one of the things that has really upset our
05:40community is government ministers stating that the fire is contained. Now that is actually obviously
05:48just on the advice of the information given from the chief officer I would assume in the Scottish
05:53Fire and Rescue Service because that is the direct link to government.
05:57It's really strange that the day the cabinet secretary put one of those statements out to say
06:04that the fire is contained, it's all in control, we're making good progress. I sat at my bedroom
06:09window looking up at the mountains and I saw two one kilometre long fire fronts running wild across
06:15the mountains and they were shifting. Contained is not a word that should ever have been used. And
06:22indeed if you look at the model that the Canadians and the Americans use for wildfire fighting a fire,
06:28the wildfire is not contained until it is encircled in its entirety by non-combustible materials.
06:35So that would either be a great big track, preferably without such vegetation to the side,
06:43especially if it's dry, or it would be black burnt ground which has no potential to reignite.
06:51Now bearing in mind we've got a lot of peat up on that mountain. The only way you can do
06:56that is to dig
06:57every single hot spot out and to damp that external fringe round. The fire now covers, I believe,
07:04because the fire service hasn't actually issued any accurate information on this,
07:08approximately 30 square kilometres. Imagine the manpower that you need to actually do that,
07:14which then brings us on to the next point. It feels very much like
07:23the government is playing a political game. Anyone who knows a significant amount about the UK military,
07:32which you would expect our Justice Secretary to do, would know that the UK has not got any UK-based
07:40water bombing capabilities. We simply don't have it. The only place we've got it is in Cyprus.
07:45The reality is that probably tied into significant agreements for how that base etc. is protected.
07:52So it's not something that the UK government could ever have assisted with.
07:58It appears the cabinet secretary actually knew that before he ever put the request in.
08:03So when he puts the request in, we have an offer comes back which says,
08:08sorry we can't do that. But what we can do is we can give you chanooks and we can give
08:13you military
08:14personnel boots on the ground to help you. And all of a sudden, that conversation I just had with you,
08:20where I said about the fire has to be encircled, the entire perimeter has to be doused, the entire
08:26hot spots have to be dug out. Maybe that now should come back to you, because guess what?
08:31Today, I believe they had nine fire appliances on scene. Fire appliances crew divided between four and six
08:36people. So that's what? Something between maybe 36 and, I don't know, maybe 50 bodies. How on earth are
08:43they going to cover the perimeter of a 30 square kilometre fire? They can't. You know what? If you
08:51had chanooks that could drop those military personnel into inaccessible locations, bear in mind a chanook
08:58can have up to 50 personnel in it in one flight. Imagine how quick you could encircle the perimeter.
09:05Imagine how quick even the SFRS staff and all the volunteers could be moved around this environment
09:11with chanooks. Plus, the military liaison officers which come alongside it to help with all of the
09:16logistics planning with it. Now, I don't talk much about my work. I've worked for 23 years in the emergency
09:24services. 18-ish of those were as a firefighter, crew commander, and watch commander of our local
09:31retain station. I've done some big, big incidents. I've also worked in the ambulance service as a tactical
09:37commander. And I've also worked alongside military liaison officers. It worked incredibly well. And that's
09:44one of the reasons why we were able to do so well in the COVID pandemic. The only way we
09:48were able
09:48to do that was thinking outside the box, improvising, adapting, and overcoming. That used to be a fire
09:55service phrase, by the way. So maybe we need to start thinking about how you could use the chanooks
10:01before you say no. Chanooks can undersling, I believe, about 12 tons in load. So they might not
10:07able to drop buckets of water from the air, but they can lug up to probably easily slinging nine
10:15IBCs, which contain a thousand litres each of water. So one chanook run would able to drop 9,000 litres
10:24of
10:24contained water for all those foot soldiers to help douse the extremities of this fire. But it's okay.
10:31We've got it. That's the pipeline. And it just doesn't work. Until the fire is contained by that
10:41barrier of non-combustible space, we're simply at the elements. It's simply the wind. It's simply
10:48whether it rains. That's what's determining the outcome of this event. Not the tactics,
10:54that have been employed by senior leadership to win or lose it. And it's really disturbing that said
11:01individuals would treat their hosts, that are quite literally feeding them, the way that they do.
11:11So, tonight, I'm off home. I'm gonna write to the Chief Fire Officer. I'm gonna write to the Justice
11:19Cabinet Secretary tonight. I'm gonna request another meeting and let's see if we can start to try and get
11:25everything to pull together to draw this to a safe conclusion for everyone fighting the fire, for our
11:33environment and for our economy, which is being hit by millions of pounds of losses. 200 people work up
11:41Glenmore Corridor. 200. They're not allowed to work at the moment. At the busiest time of the year.
11:48They've lost two weeks of trading. The way we're going at the moment, they're losing weeks more.
11:53And that's going to mean people don't have food on the table. And it's going to mean businesses are on
11:58the line. And that is not acceptable because the fire service has a role to play in the economy of
12:07our
12:08country. Thanks, everyone.