Britain 'woefully unprepared' to tackle wildfires - with new firefighting planes and barbecue bans needed, MPs warn
New firefighting planes and disposal barbecue bans are needed to tackle the growing danger of wildfires in the UK, MPs have urged. <p>The warning coincides with a new United Nations report cautioning that exceeding a key Paris Agreement climate target is now "imminent and unavoidable".</p><p>Britain is "woefully unprepared" for the threat of wildfires, MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee have warned after blazes burned homes to the ground this summer.</p><p>They highlighted critical gaps in Britain's capabilities, including a total lack of dedicated firefighting planes and insufficient water supplies, with farmers and volunteers often having to fill in.</p><widget id="4"></widget><p>Fires should be regarded as "part of our new reality", the MPs said as they called for a new national wildfire strategy, along with an Australian-style public awareness campaign.</p><p>While most UK fires are started by human activity, increasingly hot and dry summers driven by climate change are increasing the risk.</p><p>At the height of this summer's drought, Prime Minister Andy Burnham temporarily banned disposable BBQs.</p><p>Such national, short-term restrictions will be needed at high-risk periods of the year in future, the MPs said.</p><p>They also warned firefighting aircraft should be brought in as soon as January 2027.</p> <widget id="5"></widget><p>Committee chair Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem) told Sky News: "This year's record-breaking summer of wildfires was the most devastating our country has ever seen, and Britain was shown to be woefully unprepared.</p><p>"In too many locations our fire and rescue services didn't have the resources they needed, or even the water supply to stop fires spreading."</p><p>This summer's record heat fuelled the <a href="http://teams.public.onecdn.static.microsoft/evergreen-assets/safelinks/2/atp-safelinks.html" target="_self"><strong>second-highest number of wildfires in England</strong></a> in recent years, with major blazes in Wales and Scotland too.</p><p>In Stourbridge, 19 homes were destroyed, as were thousands of hectares in Scotland's Cairngorms National Park, Staffordshire and Suffolk.</p><p>Affected communities told the committee of the "cumulative, psychological toll" of constantly being on alert, and of people coughing up ash and black dust days after a fire.</p><p>A government spokesperson said improving wildfire preparedness is a priority, and it has already launched a new pilot scheme of specialist firefighters.</p><p>This week it is convening a summit of ministers, fire services and land managers to "understand how we can strengthen the response to this increasing risk".</p> <widget id="6"></widget><p><strong>Climate breach should be 'small and short as possible'</strong></p><p>Meanwhile, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the world would soon blow through the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, reaching at least 1.7C even in a best-case scenario.</p><p>This temperature threshold was a key part of the landmark 2015 UN Paris Agreement.</p><p>Scientists say exceeding 1.5C will lead to increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and flooding, and that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with that limit.</p><p>The outgoing UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said breaching the target does not mean further effort is futile.</p><p>"Overshoot is not surrender," he said.</p><p>"We can still keep it as small and as short as possible - and bring temperatures back below 1.5C by the end of the century."</p><p>But reversing the trend will require vastly deeper cuts to emissions than forecast. Leaders are due to discuss the topic at the UN COP31 climate summit in Turkey next month.</p>