A large gorse fire broke out in the Glenshane Pass area of the Sperrins in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the early hours of 27 June 2018; the first call to emergency services came at 04:57 am. By the end of the day, five separate fires in the pass had rapidly grown to cover an area of over in total, with firefighters struggling to reach the fire due to extremely high temperatures; elsewhere in Northern Ireland, temperatures reached 29.6 °C on 27 June, marking the hottest June day in the province since 1995. After attempting unsuccessfully to reach the isolated fire on foot for more than an hour during the daytime, firefighters eventually had to be airlifted into the area by helicopter later in the day as temperatures dropped.