Commoners' role in tackling wildfires

Read Anton's column every week in the Western Morning News

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AS I'm sure you'll have noticed, there was a large wildfire on Dartmoor over the weekend.

It burned for about 26 hours - through an afternoon, overnight and into the next day. Blowing before a moderate breeze, it eventually covered about 1,250 acres. Conditions weren't catastrophic, in that heavy rain a fortnight ago meant the ground wasn’t overly dried out - the fire was moving quickly, scorching off the surface vegetation without damaging the turf, or igniting the peat. It helped that the area had burnt in a wildfire a few years previously, so the volume of re-grown material was minimal.

And once more, a team of trained commoners were called out to assist, with the demountable pressure washers we keep ready to sling on to the quad bikes for such eventualities. We organise this ourselves, using part of our collective environmental agreement fund. The lads - and most of those responding were young ‘uns - drop what they're doing, leaving family members to tend to the sheep still lambing on the home farms.

Assembling at RV points as directed by our well organised administrator, they're directed on the ground by the commoners association chairman - who've respectively become sublimely efficient, and if I may, highly respected at this business.