A "huge and devastating" wildfire in the North York Moors last year was "overlooked" by the government and national media because it was in the north of England, a Labour MP has said. Alison Hume's Scarborough and Whitby constituency includes the 10 sq mile (25 sq km) area of Langdale Moor which was ravaged by a fire which burned for more than 40 days. "There was very little interest from the national media," she said, adding that in recent weeks there had been "smaller wildfires in the South that received a lot of coverage".
The government said it was "supporting every part of the country that has been affected by wildfire - not just the South". Hume said she had been "surprised" that national news outlets did not cover the Fylingdales fire "for weeks". "It's been very noticeable that since there's been wildfires in the South, the coverage has gone through the roof." Hume added that she "wouldn't want to draw anything away from how serious" a blaze in Stourbridge was last week.
"With the 19 homes totally destroyed, that was off the scale and devastating," she said. On Friday, the prime minister said emergency services were responding to 37 wildfires, with major incidents spread across the southern half of the UK. Hume said she was "really pleased" that Andy Burnham had announced a temporary ban on disposable barbecues and that an emergency alert was sent to people's phones warning of a "very high risk of wildfires".
"Of course I'm glad that we're getting more national interest in wildfires," she said. "The country's now coming to terms with something that we've been coming to terms with in North Yorkshire for a while, which is when you get a wildfire, it doesn't end when the fire's put out." Efforts to "rebuild the community" were continuing one year on from the North York Moors fire, she said. Hume welcomed government funding to help cover North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service's expenses from the wildfire, and £3.2m towards moorland recovery.
But she said the financial loss suffered by farmers and other businesses had "slipped through the cracks". "I think had it been in the South, my calls for an extension of the grant network, which exists for flooding, would have probably been better received," she said. "We can't ask our community to turn out, put their lives on the line in many cases, stand shoulder to shoulder with our fire and rescue services, help put the fires out and then say, 'well, I'm sorry your tractor was damaged' or 'I'm sorry your business was closed'." Hume, who founded and leads the All Party Parliamentary Group on Wildfires, said she had since had "conversations with government about really getting them to look at how they support people affected by wildfires afterwards".
"We're learning a lot from last year and I'm hoping that that learning can also be extended throughout the country," she said. "I don't want to go on about the North-South divide, but we know there is one, right?" Hume also called for ministers to "really look at what happens when fire gets close to a piece of critical national infrastructure". Last summer's wildfire burned near to RAF Fylingdales, part of the UK and US ballistic missile warning system.
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