Grass fires in south Wales: who’s to blame?
Andy Davies
Home Affairs Correspondent
Above the village of Wattsville in the Sirhowy valley, we find another blackened, smouldering hillside, ignominiously stripped bare by yet another grass fire arson attack.
The biggest yet this year in fact. Dewi Jones, from south Wales Fire & Rescue Service says 300 hectares were destroyed overnight. He also points to a dead shrew lying in the path which borders the fire zone and bemoans this ongoing destruction of wildlife.
It could claim a human life too, he warns, if it continues on this scale. According to the latest overnight Fire Service figures, nearly 800 grass fires have been started deliberately across south Wales since the beginning of April.
This astonishing figure will surely have exceeded 800 by tomorrow morning. As I write this, firefighters have been deployed to 6 new locations.
Who’s behind it all? Children as young as 8 or 9, says Dewi Jones, and adults too (they arrested a 35 year old man at the weekend who’s allegedly involved).
“It’s been going on for years,” he says, “it’s a cultural problem… a mindset among a small minority that it’s acceptable. It’s not.” The politicians are promising a ‘grass fire summit’ next week. But what the Fire Service in south Wales desperately need right now is… rain.
