Is Norfolk ready for the ‘Wildfire Season’?
Written in the spring of 2023, Councillor Jamie Osborne tells us about the challenges we need to be prepare for, and what the County Council needs to be doing
Suffocating heat and blazing wildfires are now part of Norfolk’s summer. Is the county prepared to prevent the worst impacts?
This summer has been another record – and not in a good way. Six of the hottest days since records began, and no sign of the heat letting up. In Greece, the Acropolis, symbol of civilization, has been closed because of lethal temperatures. Across Europe, people are collapsing in the suffocating heat. Wildfires are burning across Canada, Greece and Spain. As the United Nations has warned, we should be terrified.
For a long time, some environmentalists and governments believed that talking too much about the deadly impacts of climate change would scare people out of action. But we need politicians to be truthful about what is happening, and be prepared to save lives.
Last year, fire crews called out to nearly 700 wildfires across Norfolk. Twenty homes were destroyed in the flames. The crucial question this year is not “Will there be more wildfires”, but “Are we prepared?”
Fire crews will have to be trained on techniques for tackling wildfires like in the Mediterranean. Emergency services will need the resources and the expertise to deal with new threats from multiple fires as well as suffocating heat, and people need to know how to keep their homes cool.
It is not just wildfires that we are facing now. The heat is melting roads, buckling train lines, and leaving elderly people at life-threatening risk in their homes. Drought is threatening our food supplies and undermining Norfolk’s role as the breadbasket of Britain. We are on track to run out of water in East Anglia possibly as soon as within the next eight years.
Politicians, local and national, have to provide absolute focus and reassurance that emergency planning and preparedness is in place for what is now becoming a season of wildfire and drought.
Disastrously, those in power seem unable to provide any such reassurance, focusing instead on the very polluting road-building schemes and fossil fuel interests that are driving the danger.
This week, Norfolk’s Green Party councillors called for the County Council to urgently put in place better and more extensive plans for the emergencies that climate change is bringing, despite opposition from the ruling Conservatives. This must include making sure infrastructure is secure, that emergency services have the support they need, and that the county’s residents know what to do in the event of a heatwave or fire to keep themselves safe.
By failing to do this, the county council’s elected leaders are failing in their duty to protect our citizens.