£3.7 million cost of callouts to bonfires

Thursday 2 September 2010

SDLP South Antrim MLA Thomas Burns has described the £3.7 million cost of mobilising fire crews in the last five years to deal with 1352 incidents at bonfires sites in the lead up to the eleventh of July as ‘ridiculous’.

The latest figures, for 2009, show that fire crews had to attend 288 incidents at a cost of £894,076 in May, June and July. Data for summer 2010 is not yet available.

The figures were released after the SDLP MLA tabled a question in the Assembly.

He commented: "I recognise that great strides are being made in certain areas to better organise bonfires and the people involved in these initiatives are to be commended for their efforts.

"Councils and local communities are definitely engaging in better management of these events and they are becoming safer and less disruptive each year.

"However callouts to bonfires on the eleventh night are not the problem, it is the anti-social elements that are hanging around bonfire sites in the weeks and months leading up to the twelfth that are causing all the trouble.

"Feral youths sit around on old sofas drinking, lighting small fires, setting fire to rival bonfires and generally causing bother into the early hours of the morning.

"This has nothing to do with the orange culture or tradition, it is simply anti-social behaviour of the worst kind and it is costing us a fortune to deal with it.

"The costs are rising every year and this cannot be allowed to continue. I call on the PSNI to do more to rid communities of this nuisance element which blights many neighbourhoods and puts an unnecessary strain on our emergency services for weeks every summer."