The county's assistant chief fire officer in Kerry has warned about escalating gorse and scrubland fires after the service had to deal with 30 incidents, some quite serious, in just over a week.
There were additional reports yesterday of fires in the Cahersiveen and Ballinskelligs areas.
Kerry assistant chief fire officer Donal Guerin said "exceptionally" dry weather in January and in the first week of February has turned the ground into a tinderbox with uncontrolled burning starting earlier than usual.
"Every place is like cork," he said. "Acres of prime forest have been burned alongside whole mountain faces and large areas of heather and switch grass. A fire at Killeen mountain on the N22 east of Killarney last Sunday was simply too dangerous for fire-fighters. It took two days to burn out but had not threatened any houses."
However, a fire in the early hours of Friday morning last near the Conor Pass on the Dingle peninsula saw up to 30 acres of semi-mature forestry destroyed and a number of houses threatened.
A quarter of the county's fire-fighters were called in to tackle the blaze and half the county was without cover from 6.30pm to 12.30am. Had there been a serious car accident in the Tralee and Dingle areas, the nearest available fire unit would have been in Killarney.
Unlike Australia and the United States where fires started naturally or from people out picnicking, most fires here were preventable, Mr Guerin said.
There had been more than 40 forest and mountain fire incidents to which the fire service had been called since January. Last year there were 70 incidents, but in other years there were up to 150, he said.