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Larne Craigyhill bonfire: 17000 pallets (2021)

by daverol on 7/29/23, 7:29 AM with 55 comments

• by pringk02 on 7/29/23, 7:49 AM

  My Dad grew up in Belfast during the troubles, and was raised protestant. It's always been really interesting to me to hear his perspective on stuff like this, as he is always sort of amazed by how normalised things like putting effegies of the pope on these was back then. And how he never really thought about it until he moved, not exactly far, to Edinburgh and understood that Belfast was a place very different to most of the world at the time.

  He talks often about how you would have photos of the Mayor of Belfast shaking hands with loyalist leaders infront of one of these bonfires with the effigy of the Pope in the background and it would be seen as a good thing, a positive PR moment for the mayor.

• by Dylan1312 on 7/29/23, 9:29 AM

  For anyone interested in learning more, VICE did a decent documentary back in 2012 where they visit Belfast and speak to some of the people involved at a different bonfire site.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nzDuiv3U8o

• by elfbargpt on 7/29/23, 7:40 AM

  I ended up going to Belfast the weekend of the bonfires without knowing it existed beforehand--was a totally surreal experience. The largest man-made fires I'd ever seen right in the middle of the city streets, armored cars driving around, not many safety protocols. Kids were drinking buckfast and climbing to the top of skinny stacks that had to be over 100 feet tall.

  I would definitely recommend checking it out to anyone that can.

  Some pictures I just googled: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/eleventh-night.html?sortBy...

• by chrisjb on 7/29/23, 8:13 AM

  Logistics professionals hate them, learn how to destroy 3/4 of a million dollars using this one weird trick.

• by disambiguation on 7/29/23, 8:01 AM

  The biggest fire the North has ever seen!

  Here it is burning up in 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2i6xpWmh-Q

• by Simon_O_Rourke on 7/29/23, 8:23 AM

  Attempts to normalize this as some kind of folksy traditional community bonfire thing requires such levels of misdirection and sleight of a hand that they'd be better off doing magic shows in Vegas. These kinds of events are purely and simply displays of racist and sectarian hate - no different from burning crosses in Alabama.

  The effigies of the Pope are the more friendly of the things burned on these bonfires, the less palatable include Irish and Basque flags for whatever reason, slogans exhorting genocide, and even pictures of previous sectarian murder victims [1][2].

  It's a thoroughly vile event that happens each year, wrapped up in some false sense of "culture".

  [1] - https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/sectarian-bo...

  [2] - https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/pol...

• by cafard on 7/31/23, 2:46 PM

  Apart from anything else, do you really want to be around burning pallets? Who knows what kind of chemicals have been used on them? I used to see pallets set out free for the taking, and never ever considered using them in a fireplace.

• by azubinski on 7/30/23, 8:54 AM

  It’s even a little pity that this wild senselessness was so rushed.

  After all, it was possible to time such a large symbolic burning of logistics for the Elbakyan's EFF award.

  Because The Absurdity must be brought to the limit.

• by ggm on 7/29/23, 7:37 AM

  A hugely divisive protestant celebration of the occupation and ascendency of England over Ireland in 1690.

  It's an impressive bonfire. It celebrates sectarianism. Not unlike November 11 it's got unpleasant overtones.

  I wonder what level of fire safety distancing they do, and how it scales linearly or non linearly to size. I could believe this size of fire would loft burning materials for miles and affect air quality, as well as the environment. It's industrial pallets often.

• by AnnikaL on 7/29/23, 8:39 AM

  This is from 2021.

• by Toutouxc on 7/29/23, 8:02 AM

  Call me new-fashioned, but this crap should not be legal. I get cars, I get people heating their homes with wood, I get burning coal for electricity, but this is just a middle finger to the environment and a huge waste of energy (approximately 1.8 GWh).