What can be done to reduce risk of wildfires?

A month on from the devastating fires that tore through the West Midlands on the hottest day of the year, communities are still reeling from what they have lost.

Dozens of homes across the region, including 19 in Stourbridge, were razed to the ground by the fires on 13 August.

Some people are living with their only surviving possessions in their car boot, while others stay in a caravan as they wait to be rehomed.

While action is needed to prevent a repeat of the wildfires, with more extreme temperatures on the horizon, what that should be is not yet clear.

Speaking to Politics Midlands, the West Midlands regional chair of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), Martin Starkey, said the services in Staffordshire, where he works, were beyond stretched that day.

"Services in the Midlands on that day essentially ran out of resources and had to rely on brigades as far as London and Avon to come up and provide crews to help us cover the area," he said.

But he added it was a national issue.

FBU statistics show that there were 20% fewer firefighters employed in 2025 compared to 2010.

The drop is even higher in the Midlands, with West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) losing a quarter of its firefighters over this period, while Staffordshire Fire Service saw a drop of 27.2%.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who visited the scenes of devastation in Stourbridge, suggested that the country could follow the tactics of other countries and start using aeroplanes to fight large wildfires.

However, Starkey thinks that there should be more 4x4 capability within local fire services instead, as well as more firefighters put back on fire appliances and "better PPE, equipment and vehicles to help us deal with [the fires]".

Simon Tuhill, the chief fire officer at West Midlands Fire Service, told the BBC that in his role, he had no funding for capital in WMFS, which means things like new appliances and equipment.

During the fires, 19 smaller 4x4s were deployed, but Tuhill said they are reaching the end of their serviceable life.

"We need to think about more specialist vehicles that can respond to wildfires," he said.

Kerryn Little is a researcher in pyrogeography - the study of wildfires - at the University of Birmingham, and was also a volunteer firefighter in her home country of New Zealand.

"You can't just invest in response and suppression...We need to equally invest in prevention," she said.

For Little, this means managing landscapes from a fire risk perspective and developing early warning systems to communicate the risk of wildfires.

"The key thing is it's not just a one-off summer that we've seen," she said.

"Climate change is increasing the frequency and the intensity and duration of heat waves and droughts, these really hot, dry spells that drove the wildfires this year.

"So, essentially, climate change has loaded the dice for wildfire risk... we're going to have more days where a single spark will ignite a fire."

Tuhill and his crews know full well the impact of climate change.

"The fire service and my firefighters are at the front line of what climate change means to the United Kingdom," he told Politics Midlands.

This summer's prolonged heatwaves and dry vegetation led the prime minister to call the UK a "tinderbox", the same day the government sent a national alert to the country's mobile phones.

Ellie Chowns, the Green Party MP for North Herefordshire, believes we need to "supercharge efforts to transition to a clean, green economy" so we do not exacerbate the impact of climate change.

"The climate crisis is barrelling down the road towards us. We do absolutely have to adapt," she said.

Chowns believes the government does not yet have the urgency needed to address climate change.

"We've got to be more focused on preparedness and resilience across the board," she added.

Reform UK has backed away on net zero initiatives since taking control of local authorities across the country, calling off the climate emergency declarations made by councils such as Walsall and Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Such initiatives were introduced by previous administrations to include actions to reduce carbon emissions, protect biodiversity and help to build resilience against climate change.

Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice told Politics Midlands he was "delighted" that Newcastle-under-Lyme had "immediately scrapped the ridiculous net zero initiatives", claiming this had made savings of around £10m.

He has also defended comments he made saying people should enjoy the hotter weather, claiming that "the climate changes all the time" and that it was "smarter to adapt to climate change than to think you can stop it".

In response to hearing Tice's comments, Chowns told the BBC: "It's in our own interests, and frankly, it's in the interests not just of our children and grandchildren, it's in our interests now.

"Because the damage caused by climate change is going to hugely outweigh any possible cost that could be involved in transitioning to a more sustainable future."

Stourbridge falls under the authority of Dudley Council, whose leader, Conservative councillor Patrick Harley, said "a measured approach, not the extreme one" needed to be taken in regards to climate change.

"I think everyone agrees right across the political divide we have to adapt," he said.

Discussing the fires, Harley told the BBC that the emergency procedure put in place by the council "worked perfectly on the day", enabling collaboration with the emergency services.

"We've never seen anything like this before in the borough. And it's horrifying that you have a fire that can outrun a person and damage their property and cause the destruction that it caused."

Andy Burnham created the role of fire minister in response to this summers' wildfires.

Baroness Blake of Leeds's remit includes overseeing national emergency responses, fire policy and rescue operations.

It will also entail ensuring extreme weather preparations are in place across the country and the UK's resilience amid a rapidly changing climate.

Disposable barbecues are still banned from sale across the UK, a move that was due to most wildfires being caused by human behaviour.

While debates continue over what else should be done, Starkey has continued to be on the front line of the fires.

"What I can say, as a firefighter, is we are increasingly seeing hot summers, we are seeing the records get broken, we are seeing fire and rescue services stretched to their limits, running out of resources, running out of firefighters and struggling to deal with incidents," he said.

"I think history [has] shown that we don't learn ... So this year we need to make sure we learn these lessons."

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