Cork city fire service thanks people for ‘sensible approach’ to safety on Bonna Night

According to Cork City Fire Brigade the service had an “extremely busy” bonfire night, with crews from Anglesea Street and Ballyvolane responding to dozens of calls across Sunday evening and into Monday morning. 

While a number of ‘Nonfire’ events took place around the city aimed at helping families celebrate ‘Bonna Night’, fire crews were still kept on their toes.

Up until 11.30pm last night they had been tasked more than than 70 bonfire related calls, in addition to their normal workload.

The service reported all of the calls had been dealt with safely by their crews.

Cork City Fire Brigade has thanked the people of Cork for their “sensible” approach to safety on Bonfire Night.

Victor Shine, second officer with Cork City Fire Brigade, said that on Sunday the fire service in Cork city had dealt with more than three times the number of calls it would normally receive, but there had been no serious incidents.

“We would normally get an average of approximately 25 calls a day, but on Sunday, we received in excess of about 80 calls,” he said.

“We had 74 confirmed bonfire calls, none of them spectacular, and we had a few standard, routine calls as well, from road traffic calls to small fires.

“Thankfully, it was all fairly routine, there was no attacks on the crews or anything like that.” 

Tradition

Bonfire Night, or ‘Bonna Night’, traditionally occurs in Cork on St John’s Eve, June 23, although the tradition is said to date back to pre-Christian times.

In the past it wouldn’t have been unusual for the fire service to get 200 call-outs or more on the night.

Gardaí and fire service personnel were regularly targeted with stone and bottle throwing, and the fire service sometimes found itself unable to respond to calls.

In recent years, Cork City Council has worked with community groups and gardaí to create planned, supervised “summer fun” evenings and the event has been rebranded “Nonfire Night”.

Mr Shine said the fire service wished to thank the people of Cork for their “sensible approach to safety” and “not hindering fire service” in their duties.

“We get a call because somebody has a concern and that’s the reason we respond, and we address the situation then as appropriate, either extinguish the fire or have words with the people who are there.

“It all settled down around 11.30pm last night, and with a few tidy-up calls, it was all finished up by about midnight,” said Mr Shine.