4.3   Summary of range of opinion of fire spread

4.3.1    The fire was contained through manufactured and natural fire breaks and allowed to burn under supervision and monitoring from Forestry England, this was done using a recognised external handover form (See appendix F)*

4.3.2    I was asked to report on if the fire on the moorland reported on the 12/08/2025 was a separate incident or if it had spread from the fire in the forest, following information obtained and stated in 3.1.6 it was confirmed by Crew Manager [redacted] the fire had breached the fire break.

4.3.4    The image above shows the area indicated by Crew Manager [redacted] where he noticed the fire was on both sides of the fire break on the evening on the 11/08/2025 and where he viewed the fire to have breached the fire break.

4.3.5    The wind on the 11/08/2025 at 1800 was recorded as blowing from the Northeast which is indicated using the yellow arrow above.  Due to natural geography of the land and the various valleys that run through the area, the forecasted wind and actual wind direction can be different and change dynamically throughout the day.

4.3.6    The fire had now spread further west but was still south of the River Derwent and still in Forestry land.  Image 25 shows the area in which the fire was now spreading along the south banks of the River Derwent and the northern edge of Langdale Forest.   The blue line shows the River Derwent, red arrow showing the direction of the fire spread.

4.3.7    The fire had now burned outside of the constructed fire break area the only fire break left was the natural fire break of the River Derwent indicated by the blue line in Image 26.  At points the River Derwent was only two metres across and had vegetation hanging over the banks.

4.3.8    Image 25*8 (taken on the 29/09/2025 via drone) shows the area where the fire was moving indicated by the red arrow.  It is difficult to show exactly where the fire spread across the river as there is fire damage along several hundred metres of the river on both sides.

4.3.9    No evidence was found to show that this was a separate fire and burn patterns were found along multiple contact points between the forest and the moorland indicating that the fire did spread and could spread due to the terrain, fuel and distance between either side of the River Derwent.  Windblown sparks are a reasonable and tested method of fire spreading up to 9 metres. This is mentioned in KIRKS Fire Investigation 8th edition, Chapter 4, section 5.1.

4.3.10  It is difficult to state the exact point where the fire breached from the forest and onto the moorland on the North side of the river, but it is reasonable for me to summarise that the fire spread in this area from forest to moorland due to the evidence of fire patterns. This was aided by the width of the fire break, the environmental conditions and the natural geography of the land.

4.3.11  The weather and FSI during this period was ‘Very high fire severity’ and the FFMC was classified as ‘Fires Spread Easily’.  These two pieces of information indicate to me that the weather had a big impact on the fire and gave it the necessary momentum to breach the fire breaks and spread in the way that it did.

*appendices are not included in this plain text version please refer to the PDF version.

** images are not included in this plain text version, please refer to the PDF version