Roaches fire aftermath

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 ChrisBrooke 15 Aug 2018

Just a quick one, and after a quick search not sure if this was covered earlier.

Anyone been to the Roaches in the aftermath of the fire? How's it looking? The video I saw of the fire looked pretty bad, so I was just wondering really.

Chris.

 Dave Garnett 15 Aug 2018
In reply to ChrisBrooke:

Still closed as far as I know.

OP ChrisBrooke 15 Aug 2018
In reply to Dave Garnett:

As in local roads, or crag access from the gate?

 phizz4 15 Aug 2018
In reply to ChrisBrooke:

Since the fire started the emergency services have been using the Winking Man Pub car park as a base of operations. Web cam here shows them still on site, so I would guess the area and roads are still closed.

https://www.winkingman.co.uk/webcam/

 

OP ChrisBrooke 15 Aug 2018
In reply to Coel Hellier:

Wow. Thanks for those. Pretty heart-breaking stuff.

 galpinos 15 Aug 2018
In reply to Coel Hellier:

Incredible that the fire is still not out. As a layperson, I'd assumed that the weather we've had would have been enough combined with the effort of firefighters.

 Michael Hood 15 Aug 2018
In reply to galpinos:

The peat can smoulder underground for ages. Very difficult to know when it's totally out.

Tragic as it looks (and is), it will be interesting to see how quickly it regenerates. I'm sure there should be some university interest in this.

 mrphilipoldham 15 Aug 2018
In reply to Michael Hood:

There were green shoots appearing only a matter of days after the operations on Saddleworth were drawn to a close.

 Dave Garnett 15 Aug 2018
In reply to Michael Hood:

> Tragic as it looks (and is), it will be interesting to see how quickly it regenerates. I'm sure there should be some university interest in this.

What would have been an exceptionally good year for lizards and adders (after many poor ones) has turned into a catastrophe for them though. 

 craig h 15 Aug 2018
In reply to mrphilipoldham:

The Saddleworth / Tameside Moor fire is still smouldering in places. I've been up there a few times since (1, 3 and 6 weeks later).

The extent of the devastation is difficult to put into words, but there was new growth in areas after a week, however large areas are totally devoid of vegetation and probably will be for years to come. It wasn't uncommon to be walking through 6" of ash and cinders, sometimes it was up to 12" deep.

Here's a link to some of my photos from the 3 visits so far just so people can see the extent of the fire. The climbing areas in the Chew Valley were not effected by the fire.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/21913923@N03/albums/72157668802021297

 mrphilipoldham 15 Aug 2018
In reply to craig h:

Ah were they yours? I saw them linked on Facebook and thought they were excellent, well done! 

I haven't been up on to the moors in the area since the fire, though was at John Henry Quarry last week which has also been on fire and can attest to the inches worth of ash. 

In reply to craig h:

Well documented excellent photographs of the fire at Saddleworth, thanks for posting.

Post edited at 18:15
 craig h 15 Aug 2018
In reply to mrphilipoldham:

Thanks. They've been around a bit. An area I love and if it makes someone think twice about setting a fire or the reasons what at the time seems a stupid restriction on their fun (no BBQ's) the images have worked.

One of the main things I noticed is the lack of noise while walking across the area. Usually you'll hear curlew, grouse, plover, skylarks, stonechats as well as the background buzz of the insects. The whole area is just silent.

 MG 15 Aug 2018
In reply to Dave Garnett:

Is that generally (too dry?), or in the areas of the fires? 

 Donotello 15 Aug 2018
In reply to ChrisBrooke:

As far as vegetation goes, we had a fire at our warehouse last year in April, and the vegetation came back with a vengeance. It was much thicker and grew much faster than ever before. One of the guy's helping re-paint said he volunteered as a bush marshall in Australia, and fairly stagnant woodland thrives more after a fire and thus brings with it more habitat for animals to re-populate. 

Post edited at 20:11
 Michael Hood 16 Aug 2018
In reply to Donotello:

One of the main mechanisms of forest regeneration is fires.

 Doug 16 Aug 2018
In reply to Michael Hood:

recovery from fire varies a lot depending on the type of vegetation & the extent of fire. Many types of forest are known to be dependent on fire for regeneration (eg Eucalyptus dominated forest in Australia) but in the UK this probably only applies to pine woods (Scottish pine woods can be considered the western limit of the boreal taiga forests where fire  plays an important role in unmanaged forests). And if the soils are peaty & the fire very destructive it can takes decades to really recover

 Michael Hood 16 Aug 2018
In reply to Doug:

Yes I thought it wouldn't be so appropriate for the UK. You probably need a rather large forest that gets partly burnt out (i.e. still boardered by ok forest) for it to be an effective mechanism.

Not so likely to work in the UK's "that used to be a wood" type situation.

 broc 16 Aug 2018
In reply to craig h:

Those are stunning photos, but so very sad to see. 

There is an area of heath just up on the hill behind where we live. There was a large fire two years ago with a very large area destroyed. Within a couple of months the whole area was green again, but only with grass shoots. Two years on there is grass, bracken, a little gorse, but not much else. It takes a long time for the full diversity to recover. In the case of the Saddleworth fire the damage will take decades to recover fully on an ecosystem level. 

 sfletch 16 Aug 2018
In reply to broc:

I wouldn’t be very fast and loose with the word ‘diversity’ when addressing managed heather moorland mono-cultures.

2
 Reach>Talent 16 Aug 2018
In reply to all:

Anyone seen any recent updates on access and the state of the Roaches? 

 Marek 16 Aug 2018
In reply to Reach>Talent:

> Anyone seen any recent updates on access and the state of the Roaches? 

According to the Staffs info on roadworks.org the roads are still closed and the closure notice goes out to the 29th (although that may just be a procedural precaution).

 

 Timmd 16 Aug 2018
In reply to sfletch:

> I wouldn’t be very fast and loose with the word ‘diversity’ when addressing managed heather moorland mono-cultures.

It's an interesting one, because (as I understand it) the Peak district has the most heather moorland/biggest concentration on earth, possibly making it a globally significant decision - whether things continue as they are. 

Post edited at 20:07
 sfletch 17 Aug 2018
In reply to Timmd:

The global significance of British heather moorlands has always bemused me. If someone was wanting advice on establishing a managed habitat you’d never be able to sell them the concept of a heather moorland:

”Cut down all those trees, graze the regrowth out of existence, allow the run off to degrade the soil quality until only dwarf pioneer shrubs grow and then systematically burn and graze it to keep it that way”

You do it in the Amazon and your destroying a complex ecosystem, do it above Bamford and it’s conservation.

2
 Andy Johnson 17 Aug 2018
In reply to ChrisBrooke:

Large Roaches fire caused by camp fire

"... During the investigation the officers found a fire pit which had been created out of rocks. From speaking to local residents it is believed that people had been wild camping in the area and had built a fire. It appears they had made attempts to cover the fire with more rocks to extinguish the fire but sadly this was not enough to prevent it from spreading..."

https://www.staffordshirefire.gov.uk/news/latest-news/large-roaches-fire-ca...

 

Post edited at 14:59
OP ChrisBrooke 17 Aug 2018
In reply to Andy Johnson:

FFS.

"It appears they had made attempts to cover the fire with more rocks to extinguish the fire but sadly this was not enough to prevent it from spreading across the 200 acres of land which has ultimately been destroyed as a result of this incident."

 

 

 Michael Hood 17 Aug 2018

In reply to...

Even if you're stupid enough to have a fire like that in a dry summer, the irresponsibility of leaving it when it's not totally out (and I mean TOTALLY out) is staggering.

What they should have done is phoned the fire brigade and eaten some humble pie "I've been a numpty, thought we could control it but we can't. Please come and put it out before it spreads". The fire brigade would much rather have responded to that than what they've now had to do.

 SenzuBean 17 Aug 2018
In reply to Doug:

Oak forest in California is also dependent on fires, as is the cork oak forest in Europe. I would be surprised if the European oak hadn't also evolved some mechanisms to greatly benefit in the face of fires.

 Doug 17 Aug 2018
In reply to SenzuBean:

possibly, but the examples you note are from Mediterranean climates with dry, hot  summers where fires are a common natural phenomena (although nowadays much more frequent due to deliberate fires or accidents). The Atlantic climate of Britain (cool, humid summers) is quite different & has been different for a very long time 

 Dave Garnett 17 Aug 2018
In reply to SenzuBean:

> Oak forest in California is also dependent on fires, as is the cork oak forest in Europe. 

The area of the fire was a bit short on trees, other the the larches below the Skyline crags, largely because of the repeated grazing by sheep (despite the SWT saying they were going to have lower impact grazing from cattle).   In any case, our native oak saplings definitely don’t benefit from this kind of fire.

 

 SenzuBean 17 Aug 2018
In reply to Doug:

The UK climate might become Mediterranean within our lifetimes. ;(

 JohnG 27 Aug 2018
In reply to ChrisBrooke:

There are several posts in this thread proposing various understandings of the impact and causes of this fire. Unfortunately those suggesting any similarity with forest fires of any sort are missing the point. There isn't a potentially happy ending because nature equips some plants to deal with the natural phenomenon of fire. The basic problem is that the peat is burning in deep cavities. Peat shouldn't burn. Obviously it used to be cut and dried for fuel but the important word there is "dried". Back in the seventies government policy was to drain the peat bog moors to make them suitable for other uses. Over the last 40 years the peat has been drying out, so that now it burns readily and at very high temperatures. That's why there is a programme of blocking the drainage channels (also known as grips). Interestingly the area around the only blocked grip on the back of the Roaches is still boggy and even the heather has not burned.

Patches of some grasses are already showing green shoots and will be widespread by next summer. However this is not restoration of the ecosystem. That will take a lot of time, work and money. Even then it will be 5 to 10 years before it is back to something like it should be, if we want it to be a system that it can support good numbers of species that are currently under threat.

The deep-seated hot spots in the dry peat can remain hot (up to 300 C) for a long time. The flare-ups of visible flame occur when the cavities collapse and fresh combustible material from the surface falls into them. So please cooperate with path and crag closures until the fire services and Wildlife trust are happy to re-open them.


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