Fire 'stretched resources'

Crews from every station in the county worked alongside firefighters from West Yorkshire, Humberside, Cleveland and Durham to tackle the outbreak.

The fire, in September, was marked as an incident of special interest in a report by deputy chief fire officer Nigel Hutchinson to the authority.

The fire was first reported at 2.42pm by the ambulance service, which said that several wheelie bins were on fire on the A171 near the Flask Inn between Scarborough and Whitby.

A pump from Robin Hood's Bay was first on the scene and reported that 200 square metres of heather and gorse was ablaze and the road was blocked by traffic that had stopped due to the large plumes of smoke across the highway.

Within 30 minutes, ten pumps were at the scene, battling a fire that had spread across five acres of gorseland. A number of homes were at risk and residents were forced to evacuate. By noon the next day, 15 pumps were at the scene.

"At the height of the incident the deputy chief officer took command of firefighting operations which involved 19 pumping appliances, a number of special appliances and, for the first time in the brigade, the use of a helicopter to attack the fire with water," said Mr Hutchinson.

"The incident stretched the resources of the brigade ... every station in the county was involved in the incident at various stages, with each crew attending the scene at least twice."

Meanwhile, mobile phones improved firefighters' communications to this summer's major fires on the North York Moors.

Divisional officer Dean McQue said that mobiles filled a gap in services.

"We have long-range radios on the engines, but due to the nature of the moors, with the dips and ditches, these can have less reception," he said.

"We have-hand held radios, which we used extensively, but are shorter range.

"But now all fire engines have a mobile phone, and this was the first time we used them for a moors fire."

Updated: 11:42 Wednesday, December 17, 2003