A fire which broke out late on Tuesday afternoon alongside the Long Range River area viewing point has proven unpredictable and difficult to contain. <\/p>\n
The road, which is busy with tourist cars and coaches at this time of year, has had to be closed to traffic a number of times as flare-ups travelling underground reach the road. <\/p>\n
Rocks where vegetation has burned are holding the heat and leading to smouldering, according to personnel at the scene. <\/p>\n
[\u00a0Retailers to be asked to suspend disposable barbecue sales due to threat of wildfiresOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n The fire burned through more than 20 hectares of the park on Tuesday afternoon. It is suspected to have been ignited by a disposable barbecue which was used on a ledge overlooking the Long Range area of the park. <\/p>\n Garda\u00ed are investigating. <\/p>\n Brought under control after six hours, the Killarney fire has proved more difficult to contain than anticipated. Fire personnel as well as staff from the National Parks and Wildlife Service<\/a> and Kerry County Council<\/a> are at the scene near the Five Mile Bridge, and are monitoring the situation.<\/p>\n Oak, heath and bog have been affected, and a key concern is the nearby large swathes of ancient oak woodland.<\/p>\n Acting director of roads with the council, Vincent Horgan, said the situation was \u201cvery unpredictable\u201d.<\/p>\n Underground fires, wind and the warm weather had led to flare-ups close to the N71 on Thursday, he said. <\/p>\n Members of the public are urged not to light fires in the park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The main tourist route through Killarney National Park, the N71 Killarney-to-Kenmare Road, running between the Moll\u2019s Gap tourist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[102865,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,957,9824,11,12,15,16,31340,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-594267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-air-corps","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kerry","tag-kerry-county-council","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-national-parks-and-wildlife-service","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116949501799438074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784507657_519_YPR46XNYXRHJRKRUV2FJIV4DWM.jpg\")
An Air Corps helicopter drops water on a wildfire that broke out in the Five Mile Bridge area of Killarney National Park on Tuesday evening. Photograph: Valerie O’Sullivan\/NPWS <\/p>\n