What is Anthrax?
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The fire broke out on Gruinard Island — which lies less than a mile off the northwest coast of Scotland — on Saturday, March 26, and burnt for at least six hours. Sometimes referred to as “Anthrax Island”, the long-uninhabited locale was used for germ warfare experiments on sheep during World War 2 as the Government looked to counter the potential risk of Nazi-developed biological weapons. Anthrax is a bacteria that — depending on the exact form the infection takes — can prove fatal in between 25–80 percent of cases, and can contaminate the local environment. The island, however, was declared completely Anthrax-free by the Ministry of Defence in 1990 following four years of soil treatments, and it is now home to a variety of ground-nesting bird species, including gulls, oystercatchers and white-tailed eagles, the fate of which is now uncertain in the wake of the disaster.
One witness to the conflagration was Donna Hopton, who runs the Gairloch Marine Wildlife Centre which is based some 14.5 miles southwest of Gruinard Island.
She told the Independent that she first spotted smoke coming from the blaze as she walked her dog around Second Coast, the hamlet on Gruinard Bay that overlooks the island, at around 6pm on Saturday.
She said: “It spread across really slowly, it started on one end until the whole island was engulfed. It looked volcanic.
“It’s quite sad — there’s a lot of wildlife on that island, there’s white-tailed eagles, oystercatchers, lots of birdlife nests on that island.
“I could smell the smoke, it was the smell of wood-burning; you could see it in the air, it was a really red glow.”
Unfortunately, because Gruinard Island is uninhabited, it does not fall under the protective remit of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service — and so the blaze was left to burn itself out.
Ms Hopton told Express.co.uk that she was not able to see any flames on the island yesterday, but glowing embers were still visible around the blackened shores.
The fire, she added, “was a spectacular sight, but incredibly sad at the same time, knowing the destruction it would cause”.
For now, the full impact of the blaze on the local fauna and flora remains to be seen.
Also yet to be determined is the cause of the fire.
Last week, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service warned that the risk of wildfires in central, north-east and southern Scotland would remain “very high” until March 30 — and urged the public to remain cautious when visiting the countryside.
According to Ms Hopton, however, the local population had been speculating that the fire might not have been natural in origin.
One possibility, she explained, is that the island was being prepared for grazing via a form of controlled fire called a Muirburn, which is intended to burn off old growth, and that the blaze got out of hand. While it is still Muirburn season, it is not known if this was the case.
It is understood that the present owners of the island do not reside in the area.
Alongside this, she said, two canoeists were spotted heading out to Gruinard Island on the weekend, raising the possibility that the fire could have been set off by accident — for example, from a poorly-managed barbeque on the island’s beach — or even via arson.
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Another witness compared the inferno on Gruinard Island to “hell-fire”.
Nessie Gearing told STV News that she and her mother Kate spotted the orange glow on the sky from the fire from their home in Aultbea, around five miles south-west of the island.
Nessie Gearing said: “Driving up to it was just apocalyptic.”
The pair reported hearing the sounds of birds “screaming” in distress as the blaze destroyed their nesting grounds.
Kate Gearing added: “It was horrible. I’ve never seen anybody on the island, nobody ever goes to it, nobody wants to go on it.”
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