Ireland

Dublin Fire Brigade deals with 700 calls on Halloween

Ambulance hit by bottle and crews experienced ‘anti-social behaviour’

Each year on Halloween Dublin Fire Brigade attend to 196 fires. During the build up to the 31st October, turf wars between youths break out as rival groups battle to collect pallets of wood and tyres to build bonfires. Video: Enda O'Dowd
Sun Nov 01 2015 - 10:46

Halloween night was a busy one for Dublin Fire Brigade (DFB) which dealt with 700 calls between 4pm and 8am on Halloween.

Most of the calls were for bonfires and related incidents. In the four hours from 8pm to midnight on Saturday it answered almost 100 calls relating to fires.

In a tweet at about 3am, fire services said within 12 hours they had dealt with 19 house fires, 193 small fires or bonfires and 26 “unconscious cases”.

In a comment on its Facebook page, DFB Kilbarrack said at the height of Halloween night, the control centre was taking a 999 call every 40 seconds.

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One of its ambulances was hit with a bottle while at a case in north Dublin, it said in another tweet as part of DFB’s initiative to live-tweet Halloween.

In Clonsilla the fire crews experienced “anti-social behaviour” twice last night but no fire fighters were injured, the fire brigade said.

In south Dublin a stray firework set a patio set on fire that resulted in the kitchen window catching fire, the fire brigade said .

Crews also dealt with a large fire in Balbriggan which has been extinguished.