The fire alarm is ringing

A cross-posting from my Passed the point of no return blog.

On Friday night, I was watching Terry Gilliam's 'The Fisher King' with my son when my phone started making a very loud noise, and an emergency alert came through. It was another reminder of the serious situation we are in as we have many parts of the SE which have been without rain for more than six weeks.

David Shukman on LinkedIn explored an area which has been much in the news over the recent weeks. He has written a book called 'The Response', which was published in May 2026.

It focusses on fires and floods.

There has been a lot of coverage of wildfires in recent days - in the UK and across Europe - in France, Belgium, Greece and Croatia amongst others.

There has also been some discussion over the term 'wildfires' itself, such as this piece by Doug Specht in The Conversation.

19 houses were destroyed in the Stourbridge area of Birmingham.

The High Fenns area of Belgium is on fire. People have died in several of these fires, including the Greek ones. Croatia has had an apocalyptic fire, with imagery such as the one shown below...

On a LinkedIn post David Shukman says:

Imagine twice as many fires – which is very plausible. The fire and rescue services would be completely overwhelmed. 

In July 2022, London ran out of fire engines and neighbouring services were too stretched to help. 

The Ordnance Survey estimates that 1.8 million homes in England are at risk of wildfires. 

He says that:

"Now is the time to boost staffing, equipment and training. Banning disposable barbecues is a handy headline but it’s just the tip of the iceberg of a cultural shift that’s needed. 

Think about what sank the Titanic: long before the collision with the iceberg, the ship was cursed by weaknesses in design and management, and by pride bordering on arrogance. 

What matters is the fact that people still think it’s OK to cook in the open in heatwaves. 

There has to be education, publicity and explanation: for example, warning signs in parks with pictures of burned houses.

The government must get over its fear of scaring the public. 

Caroline Lucas made this point to The Rest is Politics podcast (in a wonderful moment of praise for my book The Response). 

Firefighting planes are no use if you only buy a couple and think that’s enough. 

They work best in fleets – the videos from France often show four aircraft flying in formation to drop water in quick succession. 

And anyway there’s bound to be a long waiting-list to buy them. 

Britain isn’t the only country to suddenly wake up to our new climate. 

So planes alone can’t be the answer.

I wonder how many fire fighting planes we have... and they can't be where all the fires are being started.

Yesterday's front page of The Observer showed the importance of this issue too.