Hundreds of firefighters battled blazes across England as temperatures hit a record high of 40.3C on Tuesday. More than 60 homes were destroyed by the blazes and fire services faced what was described as their busiest day since the second world war. Kit Malthouse, a Cabinet minister, said 13 people, including seven teenagers, had died while swimming in recent weeks as he briefed MPs on the response to the heat wave. He said of the fires: “We recognize that we are likely to experience more of these incidents and that we should not underestimate their speed, scale and severity. “Britain may not be used to such high temperatures, but the UK, along with our European neighbours, must learn to live with extreme events like these. “The government has been at the forefront of international efforts to reach net zero, but the effects of climate change are with us now.” Kit Malthouse said “the government has been at the forefront of international efforts to reach net zero”. Malthouse said Britain would continue to face “acute events driven by climate change”, adding that a new national resilience strategy would be launched “as soon as possible by the next government”. But Deputy Labor leader Angela Rayner hit back – saying his statement was “too late”. “It literally took the country going up in flames for the minister to turn his attention to this emergency,” he said on Wednesday. “Isn’t it true that the Prime Minister and his entire government are gone while Britain burns? “We may have cooler temperatures today, but another heat wave is inevitable as our climate warms. Britain cannot continue to be so unprepared.” Record-breaking hot temperatures spark fires across England – video Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS in London said it had experienced significant disruption to its IT systems due to the heatwave and had to postpone some appointments and functions on Wednesday as a result. Meanwhile, London Ambulance Service said it received the equivalent of one call every 13 seconds on Monday and Tuesday, with a 10-fold increase in heat-related incidents compared to last week. Firefighters warned that “the recipe for disaster is still here.” Riccardo la Torre, national officer of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), said firefighters worked in “ferocious and appalling conditions” on Tuesday, following the staff cuts. He said 11,500 firefighter jobs have been cut since 2010. “The dry conditions are still there, the recipe for disaster is still there. We have a lot of exhausted, overworked, dehydrated firefighters out there and the resource issue is still there today, the dry conditions are still there today,” he said. “This needs serious action, and thanks to the hard work of firefighters and control staff yesterday it was no worse – but it was horrendous. “So many accounts we’ve heard of people losing their homes and firefighters being injured are heartbreaking and we don’t know the extent, obviously, of the reports that [firefighters] faced.” He said injuries ranged from heat exhaustion to smoke inhalation and burns. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said London’s fire service received more than 2,600 calls on Tuesday – seven times the usual volume. He told Sky News: “It was the busiest day for the fire service in London since the second world war. “They received more than 2,600 calls – more than a dozen simultaneous fires requiring 30 engines, a couple requiring 15 and some requiring 12.” West Yorkshire deputy chief fire chief Dave Walton described the outbreak of hundreds of fires on Tuesday as a “wake-up call”. He said the outbreaks were a “game changer” and “fires were spreading much faster than ever”. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST The Met Office’s chief scientist, Professor Stephen Belcher, warned that temperatures will become more extreme in the future. It would have been “virtually impossible” for the UK to have experienced temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius without man-made global warming, he added. The high of 40.3C recorded at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire on Tuesday was 1.6C higher than the previous high in 2019. There was also a record for Scotland, with 35.1C recorded at Floors Castle in Roxburghshire. Concerns have now been raised about the risk of flooding after a yellow storm warning was issued across much of England from midday until 10pm on Wednesday. He said while many places will only see relatively light rainfall, there could be some slow downpours. Meteorologist Craig Snell said wildfires were still a possibility, adding: “Because the ground is so dry, the risk will be quite elevated for a couple of weeks really. But fortunately we are nowhere in the situation we were in on Tuesday.”
