A few weeks ago a member of Dublin Fire Brigade explained “blocking” in an online post. It was something that I have noticed but I thought that it was random, but as a result of the post, I decided to examine some old photographs from Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Limerick. These images from Limerick stuck in my mind because it was the first time that I actually noticed the way the fire engines were arrange. Also I was on my way to the Jasmine Palace restaurant and was near the accident when it happened but it is not my policy to photograph road accidents I only photographed the emergency services in action because of their traffic control technique.
A block is when an emergency vehicle such as a fire engine is used to protect an incident work area by parking across a lane or lanes of traffic. The unit should be stopped upstream of the incident area and parked at an angle across a lane or two of the roadway or street. In many cases, the shoulder of the road will be considered a lane if that is where the original incident is located.
Parking at an angle makes it easier for approaching traffic to identify that the unit is stopped, parked and not moving. Units parked in line with traffic, even on the shoulder, are not as easy to identify as stopped and approaching traffic will often not recognise that the unit is parked instead of moving with traffic.
A SECTION OF THE LAGAN TOWPATH BELFAST CITY – MAY 2015
When I use the Lagan Towpath I find many of the cyclists to be over aggressive towards pedestrians and I did read in a local newspaper and online that this is/was a known issue.
In May 2015 I started at Stranmillis in Belfast and walked to the Odyssey complex, where the River Lagan enters Belfast Lough. Near the exit to the Gasworks a young man tried to steal my camera but fortunately he was not successful.
I should mention that over a period of of ten years visiting Belfast this is the only such incident that I have encountered. Shortly afterwards two police officers approached me to enquire if I had seen someone matching the identity of the person in question. Apparently he would offer to take photographs using the tourist’s camera or phone and then run away with the camera. Their advise was that, in general, the Lagan Towpath was very safe but that one needed to be alert as is always the case.
There is no doubting the fact that low-level anti-social activity is an ongoing problem in Belfast and that is a great pity because there are some really excellent public facilities provided by Belfast City Council.
Every time I am in Belfast I take a walk along the Lagan Towpath because I really like it. However it does appear to suffer from a high level of anti-social activity and often the street furniture and public art installations [especially ‘Weights 2000’ by Mike Hogg] show signs of unnecessary and unsightly damage and destruction.
But to be fair, when I visited in May 2017, there was much less evidence of damage due to vandalism and the Mike Hogg installation and been repaired. In May 2018 I could not decided if the installation had been relocated to make way for a new building but the installation was in reasonable condition.
When I visited in March 2019 the installation was well located but two of the elements were damaged and all had attracted the attention of taggers.
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