Emergency services were dealing with 19 wildfires across Britain on Monday afternoon as the next UK heatwave kept the country in a firewave. Claire Belcher said the situation was the most widespread the UK has seen, while North Wales fire and rescue service stood down a major incident at 5pm on Monday.
The north Wales response involved evacuations from near a mountainside, and Cathy Augustine, the town councillor for Penmaenmawr, said some residents who had to flee were initially taken in by the Gladstone. North Wales fire and rescue service said it was safe for evacuated residents to return and warned people to keep windows shut.
North Wales fire and rescue service
Wildfires burned in North Yorkshire, County Durham, Greater Manchester, East Sussex, West Sussex, Devon, Somerset and London over the last few days. The spread across those places made this firewave more than a local emergency, with firefighters responding in more than one region at once.
Claire Belcher, director of the Wildfire Lab at the University of Exeter, said: “This ongoing ‘firewave’ is the most widespread that the UK has seen. We’ve had lots of fires in certain regions before, but we’ve never seen fires burning right across the country like this.”
Maria Barbosa
Maria Barbosa, a wildfire scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said several consecutive days with temperatures above 30C and little or no rain make vegetation a more available fuel source. She said wildfire smoke can travel long distances and expose communities far from the fire front to harmful pollutants.
Her warning mattered because the fires were not staying isolated. Smoke can move beyond the blaze itself, while heat and dry ground make more places vulnerable to ignition.
Southern Britain
Vikki Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher in impact attribution from extreme weather events at the University of Edinburgh, said: “This week parts of the UK will experience the perfect weather conditions for wildfires: hot, dry and windy. This leads to the exceptional fire danger.” Natural England said there remained an exceptional fire risk in pockets of southern Britain.
One school closed for the day in connection with the north Wales fire, and local volunteers were helping care for wild ponies. How long the hot, dry and windy conditions will last across the UK has not been answered, but the weather pattern already in place is enough to keep the risk elevated in the areas named by fire services and scientists.
