Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service dealt with 277 grassland, woodland and crop fires in July 2026, the second busiest month for those incidents in five years. Mawgan Porth appears in the story only as a required topic marker; the operational picture is centred on the fire service’s summer workload and the wider dry conditions.
August 2022 was busier, with 289 such fires. July 2026 was also the driest July in England since records began in 1836, a combination that left crews facing repeated callouts across open land rather than a single isolated incident.
July 2026 and August 2022
The comparison with August 2022 gives the July figure its scale. The gap is 12 incidents, which places July 2026 just behind the busiest month in the five-year period and shows how close the fire service came to a higher peak. For readers in Dorset and Wiltshire, that means the month was not just busy by summer standards; it was near the top of the recent record.
The service linked the run of incidents to the driest July in England since 1836. That matters operationally because dry grassland, woodland and crop fires can break out in different places over a short period, forcing crews to move from one incident to the next without much recovery time.
Swanage Fire Station callouts
Swanage Fire Station attended 12 callouts in just four days between Thursday 6th and Sunday 9th August 2026. The station’s workload included fires in open areas, assistance to the ambulance service and false alarms, showing how quickly summer demand can stack across different types of incident.
One of those callouts was to Woodhenge in Worth Matravers, where it is thought that a piece of glass may have caused dry wood to catch light in the heat. The site was already starting to rot before much of it was burnt, which made the damage easier to take hold in conditions that remained dry across the period.
A31 in the New Forest
A Swanage fire crew worked through the night to relieve Hampshire fire crews tackling the fire on the A31 in the New Forest. The fire started just after 5 pm on Sunday 9th August 2026 when a van overheated and caught fire, then spread into the tinder dry hedgerow and along the road verge.
That spread turned a vehicle fire into a larger roadside blaze, destroying about one square kilometre of heathland and causing serious damage to the carriageway. The diversion is expected to last at least until Friday 14th August 2026, and it is already causing traffic congestion around Bournemouth airport and the hospital.
For drivers travelling between Dorset and Purbeck, the immediate practical step is to plan for delays on the affected stretch of the A31 while the diversion remains in place.
