THERE ARE CONCERNS that a bonfire planned for the Eleventh Night could cause power outages at the two main hospitals in Belfast City.

The fire is to be located on a vacant lot off the Donegall Road, which also has a significant amount of asbestos on-site.

It’s about halfway between Belfast City Hospital and Royal Belfast Hospital. Nearby is a major electricity substation, which Northern Ireland Energy (NIE) said could be damaged by the fire, potentially leading to significant knock-on effects in the surrounding area.

The Belfast Trust told the BBC that senior engineers will remain on site at Belfast City Hospital during the Eleventh night to act in the event of an outage.

Bonfires are lit annually in some unionist areas of Northern Ireland the night before the Twelfth of July celebrations.

The bonfires have grown in size over the years. Some are made of hundreds of wooden pallets that tower over communities and produce large volumes of smoke when burned.

Former senior PSNI officer Jon Burrows told The Nolan Show on BBC Radio Ulster that many agencies, from the police to the Council, need to come together to ensure that this bonfire can go ahead safely, or be cancelled altogether.

“The police can’t blunder in these things alone. What they need to be doing is being part of a solution led by the likes of Belfast City Council,” he said.

“People have a right to have cultural traditions and they should be respected and protected, but bonfires should be safe, should be lawful and should be respectful.”

Wooden pallets stacked for a bonfire off Oldpark Road, Belfast, in 2023 Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

SDLP Leader of the Opposition Matthew O’Toole said that loyalists have a right to celebrate their culture, but the bonfire, if held in this particular area, “will pose a real risk to the public health of everyone in the vicinity”.

He said that the Minister for the Environment, the Northern Ireland Environmental Agency nor Belfast City Council have taken responsibility for removing the asbestos.

“Allowing a bonfire to be lit beside asbestos would not be allowed to happen in any other jurisdiction and we shouldn’t have to put up with it here,” he said in a statement.

“This will pose a real risk to the public health of everyone in the vicinity of this bonfire and it’s clear that given how harmful this material is it will be almost impossible to mitigate that risk.”

A man waving a Union Jack flag in front of a bonfire on Sandy Row in Belfast on the 11 July, 2019 Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Former DUP Health Minister Jim Wells told The Nolan Show that if he were in office, he would engage immediately with the bonfire organisers “to ensure that the bonfire did not cause any damage to essential infrastructure”. 

Wells said he’d like to see a return to smaller displays so that people can celebrate the Eleventh Night but “you wouldn’t know there’d been anything there the following morning after the clear up”.

“That’s a way the loyalist community can celebrate its culture without causing damage to its own community and antagonism to others,” he said.

“We cannot, over the Twelfth weekend, endanger the power supplies to our major hospitals, because there’ll be many people at bonfires who may well end up in A&E for various reasons.”