20-05-2025
Fires in west Roscommon contained after thousands of euros worth of forestry destroyed
Hundreds of thousands worth of forestry was destroyed after fires broke out in the across the Granlahan, Gortaganny, Coney Island, Carrowbehy and Cloonfower areas over the weekend.
Crews from Mayo and Roscommon attended the fires which raged throughout a five-kilometre radius since Saturday morning.
Homes and livestock were evacuated as a precaution while all roads leading into Gortaganny were temporarily closed.
Hundreds of acres of forestry and several acres of bog has been destroyed by the blaze, the cause of which has not been established.
Derek McCabe, Chairman of the Irish Forest Owners, told Shannonside FM that some forestry owners would 'never recover' from the losses they sustained from the fire.
Mr McCabe said that mature forestry was worth €10,000 an acre to landowners.
'Very few landowners could come back from that, given that they might have waited 25 or 30 years for that crop to mature. It's a huge hit,' he said.
Elsewhere, fire crews battled a gorse fire that broke out near Rooskey at the Roscommon-Leitrim border.
Smoke was visible throughout the Rooskey region and at least one rural road is closed.
The fires that have swept through the region have been met with concern from elected representatives.
Ballaghaderreen-based county councillor Micheál Frain said some fire crews had witnessed 'the biggest fire that they have seen in possibly generations'.
The Independent councillor said that some areas were being left with no cover because of multiple brigades having to attend one incident.
'Very often in those cases, there will be very limited – in fact, no cover – for the event that someone's son, daughter, brother, sister, in need of the emergency services,' he said on Midwest Radio.
Roscommon-Galway Senator Gareth Scahill has called for an urgent review of the fire brigade service areas boundaries to account for recent population increases and demographic changes in Roscommon.
'The fire service go to ambulance calls, road traffic accidents, they are doing the full service at the moment, it's not just fires that they are responding to,' Mr Scahill told the Irish Independent.
'We have a distinct lack of services in Roscommon, and every justification under the sun tells us that we need one in the west of the Roscommon area, but there still isn't,' added the Fine Gael senator.
Sinn Féin TD for Roscommon-Galway, Claire Kerrane, reiterated her calls for Castlerea fire station to reopen in light of a recent house fire which required the attention of crews from Mayo and Roscommon.
An external validation group review – due to begin in quarter 3 of 2025 - has been commissioned by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management to conduct in-person evaluation visits within each fire authority.
