Peterborough farmers warned over fire risks during hot summer months after arson attacks
As the summer heatwaves continue, Peterborough farmers are being urged to keep their land – and animals – safe from fire over the coming months.
Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service is encouraging owners and staff at farms across the county to follow a few simple fire safety tips to ensure they are keeping themselves and their land safe.
Watch Commander Joe Gacon, from the Service’s Community Fire Safety team, said: “One of our biggest risks, especially this time of year, is fires on rural farmland. This is because of a number of factors, such as fire spreading quickly across dry land and securing an adequate water supply, as well as finding and accessing the correct location of the incident.
“Farm fires can be devastating, resulting in the loss of machinery, livestock, stores of hay and straw, and the destruction of buildings. A serious fire on a farm can affect the financial stability of even the most well run business.”
Fire crews have attended more than 100 fires involving farms over the last two years, with more than half occurring during the summer months (June-August). There have already been 16 fires this year, some of which saw significant damage to large areas of land and surrounding vegetation.
Rural firefighting not only makes up one of the Service’s biggest risks, but it also presents a significant challenge to get a water supply to an emergency incident. The Service has taken innovative approaches to mitigating this, such as adding a purpose built connection coupling to every fire engine in the county, allowing them to access the farm’s water supply.
Joe said: “Across the county there are many farms that utilise tanks that store rainwater, which can be used for many purposes in day-to-day farming. Known as rainwater harvesting tanks, these effectively collect rainwater and store it, which is useful especially in rural areas where lack of a water supply is an issue.
“It is not just water supplies that farmers can help with. Other resources, such as telehandlers, can be offered by the farm in an emergency. This information can be added to the data terminals in the fire engine so crews are aware of the extra things they might be able to use and access them quicker.”
Farms are particularly vulnerable to deliberate fires and arson due to their isolated location, open boundaries, readily ignitable hay and straw stacks often making them easy targets. There have been some recent examples of this in the Peterborough area where multiple fires have been deliberately set, causing significant damage.
Joe added: “We do tend to see an increase in calls to fires during spells of warm weather, which results in our crews spending significant time at incidents that could be avoided. This is concerning as the crews are committed and cannot respond to other emergencies, but also for local residents being but at risk because of deliberate fire setting. Any fire, no matter how small, can quickly get out of control and spread, endangering those around and the fire crews that come to tackle it.”