Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service and partners hold wildfire response training exercise on Holy Island

Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service has teamed up with HM Coastguard, Natural England, and the North East Ambulance Service to make a variety of plans to access the island in an incident.

The area also comprises Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve which, because of accessibility issues, has been the focus of multiple campaigns over the past year to increase safety in the case of an incident such as a wildfire.

Rob Stacey, wildfire lead at Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service said: “This exercise highlighted the importance of close working with all the partners involved and we’d like to thank HM Coastguard, Natural England, Mountain Rescue and the Salvation Army for working with us to help improve our joint planning and response to wildfires.

“We’ve seen an increase in coastal wildfires in the past few years and it’s become apparent that a wide array of tactics are needed to deal with ecologically sensitive environments such as those found at Lindisfarne, which could provide a potential obstacle to us during any incident.”

Daniel O'Connor, senior coastal operations officer with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, said: “Multi-agency exercises like this allow us to be aware of each agencies’ capabilities. When an unfortunate event does happen, we can capitalise on the familiarity we’ve built to ensure effective joint-working under sometimes stressful situations.

“It was a pleasure to welcome colleagues from Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service, Natural England, Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue team and the Salvation Army to our Coastguard Station on Holy Island.”

Andrew Miller, duty controller and wildfire lead for Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team said: “The joint exercise provided an ideal opportunity for the different agencies to train together and learn about each other’s capabilities in responding to a wildfire incident.”

Andrew Craggs, Natural England senior reserve manager at Lindisfarne NNR said: “The event was a great opportunity to work with partners to see how we can support the overall response to reduce the devastating effect of wildfires.

“Natural England encourages everyone to follow the Countryside Code so we can all play our part to protect nature and prevent wildfires.”