Crews under 'immense pressure' from wildfires

Fires in Shropshire's countryside in the hot weather are putting crews under "immense pressure", according to the county's fire service.

Blazes like the one which broke out near Clun on Friday and near Pontesbury on Sunday evening, had posed "significant challenges", their head of operations Lee Baker said.

Crews from across the county were sent to Sunday's fire, which involved commercial buildings and several vehicles.

Most Shropshire's firefighters are part-time, retained crews with other jobs, and Baker said the service had had to rotate teams in order to provide breaks and relieve crews after long shifts.

He said the service had also been called on to give support to colleagues as far away as Derbyshire and south Wales.

"We're sometimes having to manage our capability in a more flexible and agile way," the officer told BBC Radio Shropshire, but added that cover was maintained across the county.

The acting chair of Shropshire's fire authority, councillor Susan Coleman, paid tribute to crews who were "going out day after day, hour after hour".

"In the last six weeks or so, we've had something like 600 incidents altogether, of which about 130 are to do with wildfires," she added.

"Normally we'd go to something like 4,000 incidents a year. If it kept on at this rate it would be over 5,000, so it's really quite significant."

Over the weekend alone, the fire service incident log showed crews were sent to 20 calls for what they called "fires in the open", and several more to reports of smoke.

Although these were mostly smaller cases and some false alarms, all required crews to check them out.

Incidents across the country have underlined the Fire Brigades Union's call for the service to be better prepared for more regular wildfires, Adam Taylor, from the union, said.

"For a number of years, the Fire Brigades Union has been making the case that actually this risk is ever-increasing," he added.

"We're not just seeing one-off, exceptional fires - we're seeing fires right across the UK, testing the resilience of the UK fire and rescue service."

The government's response to the widespread outbreaks has included emergency funding for those fire and rescue services facing the greatest pressures, military assistance and a temporary nationwide ban on the sale of disposable barbecues.

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