{"id":337199,"date":"2025-08-12T01:34:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/337199\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T01:34:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:34:17","slug":"firefighters-battle-gorse-fire-at-edinburghs-arthurs-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/337199\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighters battle gorse fire at Edinburgh&#8217;s Arthur\u2019s Seat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON (AP) \u2014 Firefighters in Scotland overnight and into Monday battled a large brush fire that broke out on a landmark hill overlooking the city of <a class=\"Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement\" data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/edinburgh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Edinburgh<\/a>, with burning gorse bushes sending plumes billowing into the sky.<\/p>\n<p>The fire broke out on Arthur\u2019s Seat, a large extinct volcano whose sweeping views over Edinburgh make it one of the city\u2019s most recognizable landmarks.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s fire came as the city kicked off its annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world\u2019s largest performance arts festival. <\/p>\n<p>Emergency services were alerted to the blaze late Sunday afternoon, and crews worked through the night and into Monday to control the blaze. <\/p>\n<p>Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Group Commander Niall MacLennan said the fire affected a large area of gorse bushes, which are thorny evergreen shrubs. The cause of the blaze was unclear.<\/p>\n<p>Rory Hadden, an expert in fire science in the engineering department at the University of Edinburgh, said most fires in Scotland are started by human actions, and noted that Arthur\u2019s Seat was very busy on Sunday. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe large number of people visiting and the very dry conditions are therefore a good mix for a wildfire to start and to spread,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p>Hadden said wildfires in and around Arthur\u2019s Seat in Edinburgh occur relatively often. He added that wildfires are becoming more frequent in the UK due to climate and land use changes.<\/p>\n<p>A similar fire broke out on Arthur\u2019s Seat in 2019, when firefighters battled a blaze there for eight hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Firefighters in Scotland overnight and into Monday battled a large brush fire that broke out&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,7029,8616,1102,12264,4179,4884,120530,120529,712,16,15,732,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-337199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-climate-and-environment","11":"tag-edinburgh","12":"tag-fires","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-niall-maclennan","16":"tag-rory-hadden","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-wildfires","21":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115013226810032405","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}