Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged that firefighters tackling a wildfire near a nuclear power station in Suffolk will have 'all the support' they need. Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service declared a major incident after being called to reports of a blaze at Dunwich Heath, near Leiston, shortly after 5.30pm on Wednesday.
Firefighters battle blaze near Sizewell
On Thursday afternoon, the service said the fire was ongoing and covered about 100 hectares, with 18 fire engines and more than 100 firefighters at the scene. Speaking to reporters during a visit in Cumbria, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said: 'We’ve got the situation under close monitoring, and I’m receiving regular updates. It is a very serious incident. I will make sure that Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service have all of the support, the mutual aid, the other services that they need, and any other resources that need to be brought to bear.'
The fire is a few miles away from nuclear power station Sizewell B and the construction site for new power station Sizewell C. Jon Lacey, the chief fire officer for Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service, said Sizewell B was an area of concern but the fire was not currently expected to spread to the area. 'We’re not expecting the wind direction to change to push the fire towards Sizewell C or B,' he told a press conference on Thursday, adding that the fire service was working with the Met Office and the Environment Agency to monitor weather conditions.
Evacuations and community response
Suffolk County Council said Cliff House Holiday Park, containing some 200 caravans, had been completely evacuated as a precaution. Deputy leader of East Suffolk Council Paul Ashton said on Thursday that the community response had been 'outstanding' but the fire was still 'raging' and 'not under control'. He said: 'However, everybody that is in any risk, depending on how it spreads, has been evacuated. So there’s getting on for a couple of hundred people from a caravan park, so both a combination of static caravans and tourers, most of those people have driven away and left. We’ve got 40 people at Westleton – so Westleton village hall is acting as a rest centre. The villagers of Westleton last night put up all of those people in their own homes, so all 47. No-one had to sleep in the village hall.'
Environmental impact
The fire has spread to parts of RSPB Minsmere nature reserve, showing blackened trees and scorched ground. Speaking near the site, RSPB Suffolk area manager Adam Rowlands said the scale of the blaze was 'unprecedented in living memory' and the damage was 'quite devastating'. He said: 'It’s been tinder dry so with the drought conditions, all the vegetation, the ground is extremely dry and so once this fire took off, it spread dramatically and quickly. It’s spreading through the pine trees, so in places that’s 20 metres high.' Mr Rowlands said the affected land, some of which is managed by the National Trust and the RSPB, was home to rare wildlife including nightjars and it would take 'more than a decade' for the habitat to recover.
Political reaction and other fires
Green Party leader Zack Polanski called for Mr Burnham to host an emergency Cobra meeting to discuss the outbreak of wildfires in Britain, including in Suffolk. He said: 'Thousands of people have been killed by deadly temperatures in the most extreme heatwaves we’ve ever faced. And yet our Prime Minister is silent in the face of this existential threat. Burnham should call a Cobra meeting and set out urgently how his Government will keep people safe amid this crisis.' Separately, in Scotland, crews said they were making 'significant progress' tackling a wildfire in the Cairngorms that broke out two weeks ago. A number of homes in the remote region were evacuated as plumes of smoke billowed into the sky, and vast swathes of trees, heather and grasslands have been left charred and blackened.
