More than three weeks after it began burning and two days after the military deployed to the area, there is hope that the huge wildfire on the hillside above the Ebbw valley village of Blaenavon may finally be coming under control. Emergency workers and soldiers described a gruelling battle against the deep-seated peat fire that has spread over 4,000 hectares (9,800 acres), putting lives, farmland and property at risk. At least 13 other fires have blazed across the valleys this weekend, prompting South Wales fire and rescue service to ask for military support – the first UK military deployment to deal with wildfires since 2018.
Nationally, approximately 36 fires are still burning, 11 of which have been declared major incidents. Extreme heat and a lack of rain, supercharged by the climate crisis, have made this summer the busiest on record for wildfires in the UK, placing significant pressure on crews and resources. Jamie Windsor, a group commander at Ebbw Vale station, said underground layers of peat beneath the orange and purple heather on the Blaenavon hillside had made the fire harder to put out.
You think you’ve got a handle on it but it’s burning underground and it just pops up again somewhere else,” he said. Small flames licked around the base of blackened trees a few metres away as they worked, while in another part of the woods several trees lit up quickly with no warning. On the ridge of the hill, a civilian-contracted helicopter picked up water from a huge plastic pool fed by a local dam and circled again and again to dowse reigniting pockets of the smouldering hillside.
Smoke from the area has been visible as far away as Cardiff and Gloucestershire. Firefighters from services around the UK have come to help improvise how to get water to hard-to-reach places, using an old steel mill on the edge of town as a temporary headquarters. New thermal camera drones and specialised response vehicles designed by the South Wales fire service came online this summer.
For weeks, residents on Llanover Close, a road on the village boundary, have watched a steady stream of fire engines, water tankers, tractors and other emergency vehicles and equipment go back and forth to the forestry track above their homes. Cindy Rogers, 60, lives in the last house on the road where Blaenavon meets the hillside. A fire in 2004 that began on the top of the mountain almost reached her house, she said, pointing from her back garden to where the fire line is still visible.
We normally get about 1,000 999 calls a week, and at the moment it’s 7,000.” Arson had been a major contributor to this summer’s fires, Monahan said. Fire safety education is another key area we focus on … Driving home last night, I saw smoke and I went and found a guy burning tires and other stuff in his garden, under a tree. I had to tell him to put it out.” The cause of the Blaenavon fire is still unknown, but across the country arson arrests have been made in relation to this summer’s fires.
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