MORE than 2,300 fire engines have been despatched in Dorset over the last five years to attend emergency calls that turned out to be bonfires or land clearance.

Figures obtained by the Echo under the Freedom of Information Act show that crews in Dorset attended 1,980 controlled burns between 2011 and 2015, sending out 2,309 engines in total.

It is estimated that the cost to the fire service of these callouts could have been more than a quarter of a million pounds over the five year period.

Reported by The Bournemouth Echo. You can read the full story here. 

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.