Louth fire services called to nearly 1,300 incidents throughout the county in 2020
Dundalk Fire Station overtook Drogheda to become the busiest fire station the county
There was a 13% increase in the number of emergency incidents that Louth fire services attended in 2020 compared to 2019, according to Louth County Council.
In 2020, there were 1,291 incidents that Louth fire services attended, compared to 1,141 in 2019.
The number of incidents was the highest since 2018, when there were 1,271 callouts.
Dundalk Fire Station was the busiest station in the county, with a 30% increase in incidents compared to the previous year. In 2019, Drogheda Fire Station was the busiest in the county.
LCC has said that this was due to an increase in calls from the Cooley peninsula.
The number of road traffic incidents in Louth fell in 2020 however, with 137 in 2020 compared to 167 in 2019.
LCC have said that this is likely due to the drop in traffic volumes due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown.
There was also a significant increase in the number of gorse fires in Louth in 2020, with 77 total in 2020 compared to just 11 in 2019.
Forest fires increased as well, with just three in 2019 but 10 in 2020, while grass fires went from 33 in 2019 to 57 in 2020.
According to LCC, this was evident from a large number of fires in the Cooley peninsula in April, May and June of 2020.
The number of skip and bin fires also increased, with 313 incidents in 2020 compared with 221 in 2019, largely due to the long dry spells in the summer months.
Louth fire crews also responded to 131 calls from Meath last year.
The council have said that usual firefighting activities were curtailed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with usual activities like training, drills and other station activities scaled back due to the pandemic.