Blaze engulfing Edinburgh's iconic Arthur’s Seat expected to last for 'couple of days', fire chief says

Fire crews are continuing to battle the blaze into Monday, after it broke out shortly before 7pm on Sunday evening.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) had six appliances at the scene as teams of firefighters continued to battle the blaze.

Images and footage emerging online show orange flames illuminating the skies over Edinburgh, with large clouds of smoke drifting over the city.

Discussing the response in Edinburgh, as well as the work ongoing to tackle the wildfire in the Cairngorms, which has been burning since last week, John Henderson of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said: “In terms of size on the ground, the fire up in the Cairngorms region is about six-and-a-half square kilometres – so a relatively large fire.

“The fire on Arthur’s Seat, at the minute, is about 0.01 kilometres squared.

“Protracted wildfire incidents, they’re weather-driven, we deal with them in partnership, they take a protracted period of time to deal with them.

“We tend to be there for protracted periods of time, even after the fire is extinguished to make sure that we’re maintaining the hotspots.”

Specifically on the Edinburgh blaze, Mr Henderson said: “The feeling from the ground there is that we’ll probably be there for a couple of days, continuing to tackle that and dampen out hotspots from those.”

SFRS say first responder arrived at the scene following reports of the fire at 6.38pm on Sunday.

Read more: Areas of UK to enjoy cooler spell of weather but it may be short-lived, according to forecasters

Read more: Passport to Piddington: Oxfordshire village to hold independence referendum over asylum seeker housing plans

It came as SFRS continued to battle a wildfire in the Cairngorms, which has been burning since Wednesday.

A spokesperson said: “We were alerted at 6.38pm on Sunday 19 July to reports of a fire in the open at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.

“Operations Control mobilised four fire appliances and crews are still at the scene.

“There are no reported casualties.”