Prime Minister Andy Burnham has warned that flooding could follow the wildfires currently affecting the UK, as he visited the scene of a fire in Stourbridge, West Midlands, where locals were evacuated. A total of 54 people have received treatment from paramedics, including 19 who were hospitalised, following wildfires across the region.
PM's warning on floods
Speaking to the media, Mr Burnham praised firefighters and said: "We might be in for a wet autumn and winter straight after this, because of El Nino and some of the issues there, which was reported to Cobra. So, after fire could come floods." He added: "We have to face up to the changing climate. I think we need a different debate about that. There's no point denying where we are. We need to face up to it. We need more clean energy. We need to see that transition accelerate. Those are all of the issues that, you know, are right now in discussion."
Mr Burnham noted that the Cobra meeting earlier this week enabled the mobilisation of resources to individuals, communities, and fire and rescue services, expressing gratitude to them.
Met Office outlook
Later, Mr Burnham told the BBC that the Met Office expects the dry spell to last until the end of September, with some rainfall then. He said: "Maybe some rainfall, but not as much as we need, and then we are heading straight into a very, very wet latter part of the year, where the risk of flooding will be maybe greater because of the dry ground conditions." He also noted that fire and rescue services are not currently set up for flooding, saying: "These are questions that I have to take away, and you know I won't shy away from them."
Grahame Madge, Met Office climate spokesman, called it a "tremendously tricky job" to determine which climate drivers will be most influential in the upcoming autumn and winter. He told the Press Association: "But the Prime Minister is perfectly right in what he said, in terms of there is a known association between strong El Nino events and a wet autumn. It's important to highlight that El Nino is a pattern of natural climate variability – it's not linked to climate change per se. It can accentuate other climate signals, such as a warmer atmosphere, it can hold more moisture, all of that, but it's not an artefact of climate change itself."
Concerns over food security
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the Commons environment committee, expressed concern about the drought, describing it as "desperately worrying". He highlighted the potential impact of flooding on UK food security, telling PA: "Water engineers will always tell you that Britain has a water management problem, not a water resilience problem. That means that we're not good at harvesting it when we've got too much of it, and then we keep losing too much of it when we've not got enough of it. From the point of view of food security, food production, fields in the late winter and early spring will be under a foot of water, which the Environment Agency then pumps out to sea, and that water is not then available for use later in the year when farmers need it for irrigating crops or providing food for livestock."
