Galloway Mountain Rescue Volunteers Work Around The Clock During Wildfire

On Friday evening, two team members arrived at Caldons, Glentrool, in preparation for the early morning start setting up the Bruce’s Crown Race.

On arrival, they could see the orange glow of wildfire toward Buchan Ridge. They drove to Bruce’s Stone car park to try and get a better view of the fire’s location. They noticed a few cars parked at Bruce’s Stone and immediately became concerned about wild campers in the area.

They still could not determine where the fire was, so they drove to Culsharg Bothy. On arrival, they could view the full extent of the fire and location. At this point, they alerted the team leader, who alerted the emergency services and expressed concern about possible campers in the area.

At 0020hrs a full team callout was put out. The team arrived at Stroan Bridge to meet with police and fire personnel. The police relocated the RV to Glentrool Hive. At the RV, police and a GMRT Incident Manager inquired about the campers’ location. Police obtained phone number and sent out phone finds.

At approximately 3:30 am, a phone find located two campers north of Little Spear. A hill party deployed and made its way up Kirriereoch to pick up the campers on Little Spear. They were both safely located and evacuated from the hill. While this was happening, Rescue 199 from Prestwick located campers in the Loch Valley region and got them to safety. The last remaining campers were located around 10am not far from Bruce’s Stone.

During the day team members assisted using the team drone to assess different areas. At 330pm new information from FLS staff confirmed that the fire was spreading north quickly toward Loch Doon and had also moved to the south of Loch Dee.

Team members assisted police officers alerting residents and campers in the Loch Doon and Clatteringshaws areas, advising them about the fire.

Our control vehicle was also deployed to Loch Doon to assist the police and also act as spotters overnight. All team members were safely home by 4:00 a.m. this morning.

We would urged anyone heading to the hills over the next week to take care and avoid lighting camp fires or using naked flames.

It’s an exceptionally dry period of weather we have been having and for the next week it is going to be very dry as well.

The organised Bruce’s Crown Race and Heart of Granite races were all cancelled.

Also, a big thank you to Glentrool Hive and their volunteers for looking after us all. Very much appreciated