An excellent article in the Guardian today covering the July 2022 fire in Wennington. A fire in a field quickly moved to neighbouring properties and 18 homes were burnt down.
‘In total, 70 houses were destroyed across the UK that day in a record 600 wildfires – the largest loss of British housing to a threat previously assumed to be more relevant to California or southern Europe, and evidence of the worsening climate crisis.’
This is the study by OS that the article references. It has used GIS to map those populations most exposed to wildfire crossing the ‘rural urban interface’.
On wildfire courses in the UK students cover the ‘hierarchy of response’ which, understandably from a human perspective, places People then Property then Landscapes as the priority for emergency fire response. And there is also, somewhat understandably, a resistance to committing resources to fires that don’t threaten people or property.
On the recent Snake Pass fire we saw the tremendous speed – and resultant damage – that a wind direction change (from a westerly to a southerly) can produce.
I hadn’t realised that currently in the UK there is no legal requirement upon the private utility companies to have water available at an appropriate quantity and pressure for firefighters !!
I don’t think it will be long before the rural-urban interface fire prevention measures that are legal requirements in places like Jasper and Alaska (like a 5m vegetation and combustible material gap around properties) start to become commonplace in the areas illuminated in the OS analysis.