Impact of infernos on the capital: 2,600 calls to Fire Brigade, 41 properties lost, 16 firefighters injured
The impact of fires that raged over the last two days has been laid bare, with services stretched, emergency responders injured and multiple houses and businesses lost.
The London Fire Brigade received an almost nine-fold increase in the number of calls for incidents they had to respond to yesterday, was the “busiest day we’ve had since the Second World War”.
Amid the series of blazes, the LFB wrote to all local authorities urging an immediate ban on disposal barbecues.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on a normal day the brigade would receive about 350 calls, and on a busy day 500. On Tuesday, it had to take 2.600 calls.
Fires it had to respond to included in Upminster, Croydon and Wembley, with Khan saying 16 firefighters were reportedly injured while tackling the blaze, including two who were sent to hospital.
Khan said the temperatures exceeding 40 degrees and the subsequent fires showed “consequences of climate change”.
When asked about the causes of the fires, he said some began “because of the behaviour of us human beings inadvertently,, leaving a match here, or because a glass bottle is on the on the dry grass and magnifies the rays of spark leads”.
The fires are “akin to California, and the south of France. And that’s my point about this is not normal. These are exceptional times.”
“If you look at the 12 hottest days in our country ever, all of them have occurred post 2003.”
Asked about how stretched emergency services are, Khan said he’d been in touch with “the commissioner. He’s been in service for decades now. He was on the frontline during the riots in 2011. He was at the scene at Grenfell tower.
” He says he said nothing like this in his long career.”