Langdale Fire Latest: North Yorkshire Fire Chief Says No Military Yet

National financial and firefighting assistance will be delivered to help tackle the blaze on Langdale Moor, where a major incident has been declared.

Emergency services are set to receive national support to help tackle the fire that has been blazing near RAF Fylingdales since August 11.​

The number of appliances at the scene is set to be doubled, according to Jonathan Dyson, Chief Fire Officer of the Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.

He also revealed that unexploded ordnance (UXO) was creating additional issues in an area that was previously used as a tank training ground during the Second World War.

More than a dozen explosions have so far been reported, and fire crews have had to adapt to “defensive” tactics in areas that still have UXOs.

Jonathan Dyson, Chief Fire Officer, said:

 "The fire is has made a rapid spread further north and then across to the northwest. And this has been the key areas of our focus, trying to make sure that we maintain the critical road, network and infrastructure within the county.

"Making sure that, of course, emergency response and medical aid and support can still get through local communities. And then trying to minimize that impact as to what the firefighting efforts are doing one thing we have been aware of is the significant pressures upon our service to continue our business as usual function for firefighting around the county. And also because we are largely an on-call county, which means that we have whole time firefighters that are available 24 hours a day and our on-call firefighters are colleagues who have other primary employers.

"Now for those colleagues, that puts a significant pressure on them, their families, and their employers. And therefore we work around this in the due systems and our approach to this. Now, I have today made a request into the national resilience for national assets to be deployed to the, to the area.

"This is for two reasons. Predominantly, it's to make sure that we have appropriate provision that should the fire continue to spreading the way it has been doing, that we can maintain the appropriate firefighting tactics. And two, to make sure that we are able to cover the welfare and provision of all staff attending this and make sure that we have the provisions and welfare in place for the respite that we need to provide 'em the rest for those individuals.

"So we anticipate that the our request is being functioned now by the National Resilience Team. And therefore we should start to receive or hopefully receive the assets that we've requested in the coming hours. So where are firefighting techniques going now? So we still have a helicopter deployed into the air.

"This is doing two functions. It's doing aerial reconnaissance for us to allow us to understand the area that's covered. And the key hotspots are where the fire is actually spreading further, or in areas where, because of the significant boundary of this, we cannot of course, maintain complete aerial coverage all of the time.

"And then secondly. Where there are areas that re flare or the fire is advancing, has been driven by the wind, then we can mobilize the helicopter into that area to have an immediate approach to water application alongside then mobilizing crews or still trying to maintain that boundary. Now, this has, from my perspective, been a truly community engaged effort into the firefighting for this we've.

"Utilize and received great support from our local farming community who have provided water bottles and tanks from their farm to help us with the water provision across there. Because two of the significant challenges that faces firefighters is the significant and undulating ground.

"It's extremely difficult to try and cross the moland, particularly in fire kits and trying to do the water application in there. Which does hinder some of the firefighting operations. But one of the rare occurrences for this was that we had to adopt a very defensive firefighting strategy in one of the key sectors due to finding unexploded ordinance.

"And as the peak continues to burn down, it is finding the World War II ordinance and therefore exploding. And we have experience now over 18 ordinance explosions within key areas now, understandably. Our firefighting tactics can only be defensive in those areas, and therefore, where we cannot deploy firefighters immediately into the scene, we therefore deploy them into other areas to try and prevent the spread as it moves across.

"Now all of this takes significant coordination, logistics, and we have our welfare provision in place. We have our command units and our command structures in place, which includes the local resilience forum who are represented here today and partner agencies and once again, extend my sincere thanks to them.

"I also want to thank our contractors in the area who have been. On scene with us working throughout and without this, they we wouldn't be able to do the significant fire breaks, et cetera, that they are working around the clock to, to maintain. Ultimately, whilst this is a big incident for North Yorkshire, we have deployed and we will continue to deploy and we have absolute confidence that we will bring this incident to a successful conclusion.

"That does include and will include the support of our partner agencies and where we're working with those. Now the next steps for us, we will hopefully, as we said we will work through, we'll receive the national resilience assets. Those assets will then be deployed onto scene and become part of our working strategy for how we mobilize over the next three to seven days.

"And where we're working, we're monitoring key areas to make sure that we maintain the local road and network infrastructure and we can maintain the access and EGS from those areas. But we also have to be realistic. And as the fire has continued to move across the malls, we have evacuated small scale areas predominantly into holiday helm accommodation and caravan areas.

"And we're working with strategies should we need to evacuate areas of population. Now, before we would do that. We would go through an informing scenario where we would target certain post codes in areas where we will inform them as to what the strategy is, how our partner agencies would help them to be evacuated, and of course where they would go to, and also significant reassurance from them around their property and what our firefighting tactics would be to prevent or to mitigate that circumstance happening.

"If we have to do those, please rest assured that you will be informed. You will receive guidance as to what, where, and where it will be necessary, and then continued support throughout. And my last point on there is around the donations. Now, our, the public have been fantastic in their support for the service and indeed the farmers and the contractors across the board we have received donations, we have sufficient supplies and we're of course maintaining those for our crews.

"So whilst we don't need anymore, I will put out a thanks once again to the public for their support and indeed for the, those donations." 

The request for 10 additional firefighting appliances is “currently being processed by the National Resilience Team”.

However, he added that no requests for national military support had been made and that a scenario requiring such assistance was not envisaged.

Locals have been advised that if they need to be evacuated, they will be contacted.

In a statement online, North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue said:

“If you do live in areas near the fire, you might want to consider preparing a grab bag in case you need to leave at short notice.”

On Tuesday, some areas had been evacuated, including the Grouse Hill Caravan Park, but no property has reportedly yet been involved in the fire.

Emergency services say people must follow diversions and road signs for everyone's safety though it is best to avoid the area.