Andy Burnham finally responds to ‘national emergency’ weather

Andy Burnham finally responds to ‘national emergency’ weather



Firefighter points a water hose at an apocalyptic-looking scene of burning land in Suffolk, 2026. Andy Burnham has now called a COBRA meeting to discuss extreme weather in the UK.

‘The Prime Minister has finally acknowledged the ongoing weather crisis and announced he will chair a COBRA meeting on the matter.

Labour MP Clive Lewis has said that the first point on the meeting agenda should be “North Sea Oil“. He says this because Andy Burnham has suggested he’d be open to more drilling despite the UK being on fire as a result of human-driven climate change.

Britain is entering into its fifth heatwave as wildfires rage up and down the country. In response to this, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) described the situation as a “national emergency”.

‘So the government needs to take this seriously’

In the clip above, FBU general secretary, Steve Wright, says:

These incidents are resource heavy, often firefighters on the front line without the adequate resources, personal protective equipment for hours on end working in extreme heat, extreme conditions. So extremely testing times. And we’re seeing this all across the UK with no respite actually.

We’re in our fifth heat wave, I believe, going into that this week. So we know these incidents are going to increase. And the strain and the stress on firefighters is immense at the moment.

The LBC host asked the following of Wright:

The fire that’s been going on in Hampshire, which has taken a couple of days to get under control. How long, realistically, can and is a firefighter allowed to be tackling that before they have to be replaced by somebody else? Because obviously the fire is burning 24 hours, so it needs constant attention.

Wright answered:

Well, ordinarily, firefighters will be on the incident ground, as we call it, for four hours. A working job would require them to be working for four hours. But we know and we have heard stories of firefighters being away from their fire station for 16, 17 hours. And that is far too long to be out in this heat; far too long to be out with any kind of resources and welfare arrangements that they need in place to be able to remain safe, fit, and well to do the job.

So there hasn’t been a rotation of crews in many places as much as we would like to see. We have seen firefighters being quarantined from all across the UK, firefighters from London being mobilised to parts of Yorkshire. We’ve seen firefighters in the past from Merseyside being sent to Dorset. So we’re having to pull resources from all across the UK to deal with these fires.

These fires are happening…at the same time, all across the UK. It’s not just a one-off incident in one part of the country where resources can just be pulled in. So the government needs to take this seriously. I think it is a national emergency at the moment, and we need a national strategy of how we’re going to deal with it.

The question had been whether Burnham would even acknowledge this crisis — and now have an answer.

Burnham acknowledges Britain’s burning

Many have criticised Burnham for remaining silent on the climate crisis which is ravaging the country.

The extreme heat and drought we’re experiencing impacts agriculture, wildlife, water supply and our health.

The hot and dry summer we’re experiencing isn’t just a result of climate change; it’s also the product of an extreme El Nino event. In other words, while the climate will continue to warm, this could be the hottest and driest summer we experience for several years. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry, though; it just means we’re getting an early taste of what ‘normal’ will look like in future.

Featured image via New York Times

By Willem Moore





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