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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
National
Jamie Calder

Crews remain at Arthur's Seat as blaze continues overnight

At around 6.30am on Monday, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) had six appliances at the scene. (Image: PA)

FIRE crews continue to battle a fire that broke out on Edinburgh's Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags on Sunday evening.

Six appliances remain at the scene as of 7am on Monday. It is expected there will be a Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) presence for at least "a couple of days".

Members of the public seen watching as the fire spread in the early hours of Sunday evening (Image: NQ)

Emergency services responded to reports of the fire at 6.38pm on Sunday.

A SFRS spokesperson said: “We were alerted at 6.38pm on Sunday 19 July to reports of a fire in the open at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.

“Operations Control mobilised four fire appliances and crews are still at the scene.

“There are no reported casualties.”

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, assistant chief officer John Henderson discussed the response in Edinburgh, as well as the work ongoing to tackle the wildfire in the Cairngorms, which has been burning since last week.

“In terms of size on the ground, the fire up in the Cairngorms region is about six-and-a-half square kilometres – so a relatively large fire,” he said.

“The fire on Arthur’s Seat, at the minute, is about 0.01 kilometres squared.

Protracted wildfire incidents, they’re weather-driven, we deal with them in partnership, they take a protracted period of time to deal with them.

“We tend to be there for protracted periods of time, even after the fire is extinguished to make sure that we’re maintaining the hotspots.”

Specifically on the Edinburgh blaze, Henderson said: “The feeling from the ground there is that we’ll probably be there for a couple of days, continuing to tackle that and dampen out hotspots from those.”

It is understood that despite efforts on Sunday evening to contain the blaze, it spread further around the side of the ancient volcano at around midnight.

The landmark and the surrounding Holyrood Park have suffered several fires in recent months, including one in May near the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel and another last August that wrapped around much of Arthur's Seat during the Fringe Festival.

The smoke could be seen from across Edinburgh (Image: NQ)

It is currently unknown what has caused the blaze that sent plumes of smoke over the city.

It comes as the SFRS continues to tackle a wildfire in the Cairngorms, which has been burning since Wednesday.

The Cairngorms fire started in heathland at Ryvoan Bothy, near Nethy Bridge, late on Wednesday morning and spread to cover an area of around six kilometres by Thursday afternoon.

A number of homes and businesses, including campsites and ski resorts in the Glenmore Forest Park area, were closed and evacuated as a safety precaution.

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