Forty-three new wildfires across UK in the last 24 hours, fire official sayspublished at 10:35 BST
10:35 BST
Phil Garrigan, chair of the National Fire Chief’s Council (NFCC) has described the strain on services across the UK, which have been called out to an additional 43 new wildfires in the last 24 hours.
This is in addition to largescale incidents in the West Midlands, South Wales and Hampshire.
“There’s still 41 fire engines which aren’t necessarily deployed in their own areas because they are deployed into those three areas where there are major incidents declared,” he tells BBC Breakfast.
“We’ve had 11 major incidents declared over the last 48 hours, which means fire and rescue resources are incredibly stretched and under incredible pressure.”
The former chief officer for Merseyside said there were a number of requests for resources during the busiest 24 hour period that could not be met.
“Fire and rescue services
were asking for resources, they’d asked for maybe 10 additional appliances to
come in nationally, and we weren’t able to provide them with the full 10 in the
first instance.
“We’ve had to provide them with those 10 fire appliances over a
more extended period of time than we would have liked to.”