A TOURIST has captured amazing video of a “volcanic” fires on Skye – in the frozen depths of winter.
Roger Kinder, 58, filmed the enormous blaze on the island from over three-miles away.
It is understood the flames came from the controlled burning of heather or gorse near the village of Uig on Monday evening.
Temperatures in the area were around five degrees centigrade but there been little rain lately and winds approaching 20mph would have fanned the flames.
Roger, a film-maker and musician from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, added that the flames appeared to be almost as a tall as a house.
He said: “We were on our way to the pub around 5pm when we spotted the flames across the water.
“I did ask in the pub and they said it wasn’t unusual to see moor fires getting out of hand in the past.
“The lens I filmed it on is over a metre long and the fire was over three-miles away, but the flames were huge, they must have been the height of a house.
“It seemed to cover a very large area, the epicentre must have couple of hundred metres wide but there were other smaller fires burning all around it.
“There were houses to the left of the shot, from memory but it it appeared to be letting itself burn out.
“It has been extremely dry here for the last couple of weeks and it was quite windy too. It was the perfect conditions really.”
Roger added that he couldn’t see anyone attending the massive inferno, but wasn’t sure whether it was controlled.
He said: “I couldn’t see any people attending to it, so I don’t know whether they were just letting it burn itself out or if it was out of control.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said that they did not receive any reports of muirburns but that it may have simply been a controlled gorse-burn.
He said: “We didn’t reveive any reports of muirburns on Skye for that day, but that doesn’t mean to say there wasn’t one.”
Hundred of viewers commented on the stunning fire caught on camera.
Jo Cleveland said: “Terrible for me to see, I’m an Aussie and we often have fires getting out of control.”
Carole Millington wrote: “Not great over this side the wind is blowing the smoke over into Glen Ose and trapping it there. I came home last night to find the area shrouded in thick smoke which was all inside the house too.”
Ann Sutherland commented: “Looks like aussieland fires”
Fiona Wood said: “Maybe muirburning, they do sometimes get out of control. The other year on Skye there were loads that got out of control, the firemen were out most days and nights.”
In Scotland, muirburns – or heather burning- are permitted between October unitl around the middle of April.
The fires on the moorland are set to burn heather and other vegetation to clear the way for new growth.
