Bridgend: Fire crews battle large blaze at recycling centre

Residents have been advised to keep their windows and doors closed after a fire broke out at a recycling centre in south Wales. More than 40 firefighters are tackling the large blaze at Nolan Recycling in Stormy Down, near Pyle, Bridgend, and it is expected to continue for several hours.South Wales Fire and Rescue service said the fire broke out about 18:19 BST, and it sent six fire engines to the waste transfer site. It added that the blaze had been contained but the incident was still ongoing.

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Daily Mail​

an hour ago

• Daily Mail​

Britain swelters on hottest day of the year as temperatures soar towards 34C and experts say 600 will die in roasting heatwave

Sunglasses, sun cream and umbrellas are out in full force today, as sweltering Brits continue to be gripped by blistering weather as the temperatures continue to soar. Today has become the hottest day of the year so far with parts of eastern England set to be basking in sizzling temperatures of 34C. But it's not all sunshine and smiles as an amber heat-health alert has been issued for the whole weekend across England, as experts warn nearly 600 people in England and Wales could die in upcoming heatwaves. Parts of England and Wales experienced heatwaves yesterday, while Northern Ireland its warmest June night on record with temperatures staying above 18.2C until Saturday morning, the Met Office said. Elsewhere in London, terrified passengers were stuck in heatwave hell as customers said they felt like they were being 'slow cooked' in 'an oven' when services came to a halt with no air conditioning or ventilation. Early this morning, large crowds gathered at Stonehenge for the annual summer solstice, with temperatures soaring 18C by 5am for those observing the annual spectacle. But ice-cream and hot weather aren't the only items on the menu, as stormy weather threatens to put a screeching halt to the sweltering sunshine with a yellow thunderstorm warning on the horizon. Northern England, from Nottingham to above Newcastle, have been issued a yellow thunderstorm warning, which will come into force from 5pm until 3am tomorrow. The Met Office warned the most intense storms could produce 'frequent lightning, large hail and gusty winds', along with a chance of flooding. Met Office spokeswoman Nicola Maxey said: 'There are scattered thunderstorms coming through. 'Some of the rain could be quite intense, and frequent lightning, hail, gusty winds and some heavy downpours, which we haven't seen for a while. 'Some of the ground is quite hard at the moment, and when you get heavy rain hitting hard ground, it can cause surface water issues. 'You might find surface water on the roads, drains finding it difficult to cope and a small chance of homes being flooded.' An official heatwave is recorded when areas reach a certain temperature for three consecutive days, with thresholds varying from 25C to 28C in different parts of the UK. It comes after the Met Office confirmed that 'many places' in England and 'one or two areas' in Wales, including Cardiff, entered a heatwave on Friday. Aidan McGovern, meteorologist at the Met Office, said: 'At the moment, the temperatures will be highest towards the east, [with] lower temperatures in the west compared with Friday but still high humidity. 'So, it's going to feel oppressive in many places, and [there is] always a chance of some showers developing as the day progresses, particularly towards the west. 'Temperatures [will be] peaking at 31 to 33, or 34C, somewhere between London and Midlands and north-east England.' There will also be very high UV and pollen levels across the country on Saturday, the forecaster said. The Met Office also warned of more of heavy downpour battering parts of the country later this evening. Ellie Glaisyer, meteorologist at the Met Office, said: 'We do have a yellow warning in place for thunderstorms for the very far north of Wales, northern parts of England and in the very south east of Scotland. 'That warning is in place from 5pm this evening until 3am tomorrow. We could see around 30 to 40mm of rain falling in a couple of hours as well as some strong winds. 'These could be around 40 to 55 mph and some frequent lighting and large hail could be experienced in that warning area. 'There is a chance we could see some heavier downpour elsewhere, particularly across the south east of England in the early hours of the morning and in the north west of the country.' BERKSHIRE: Two kayakers stop off at Whiitington's Tea Barge to buy cans of beer on a hot and humid afternoon The forecaster also added there could be 'the odd rumble of thunder' across the north and west of the country. Ms Glaisyer added: 'Generally tomorrow it'll be a lot fresher with temperatures much closer to average. 'The south east will still hold onto those warm temperatures for a little while longer and into next week.' It comes as nearly 600 people in England and Wales are predicted to die as a result of this week's heatwave, researchers found. Experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College London used decades of UK data to predict excess mortality during the hot temperatures from Thursday to Sunday. Their study, released on last week, forecasts that around 570 people will die because of the heat over the four days, with the excess deaths estimated to peak at 266 on Saturday when the heat will be at its most intense. London is predicted to have the greatest number of excess deaths with 129, as researchers say their assessment highlights how extreme heat poses a growing threat to public health in the UK. A amber heat-health alert was issued by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) for the first time since September 2023, and is currently in force until 9am on Monday. It warns 'significant impacts are likely' across health and social care services because of high temperatures, including a rise in deaths, particularly among those aged 65 and over or people with health conditions. Following the hot weather, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) urged the public to take heat and water safety seriously. During 2022's heatwave, temperatures rose past 40C, leading to 320 people being treated in hospital. Steve Cole, policy director at RoSPA, said: 'Heat is no longer just a holiday perk - it's a growing public health risk. 'We're seeing more frequent and intense heatwaves, both in the UK and globally, and the data shows a clear rise in heat-related illness and fatalities. 'Warm weather can also be deceptive when it comes to going for a dip. 'While the air may feel hot, water temperatures often remain dangerously cold, which can lead to cold-water shock, even in summer.' Previously, World Weather Attribution (WWA) research group released a study which found a heatwave was about 100 times more likely and 2-4C hotter due to climate change. Dr Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, lecturer at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said: 'Heatwaves are silent killers - people who lose their lives in them typically have pre-existing health conditions and rarely have heat listed as a contributing cause of death. 'This real-time analysis reveals the hidden toll of heatwaves and we want it to help raise the alarm. 'Heatwaves are an underappreciated threat in the UK and they're becoming more dangerous with climate change.' It comes after temperatures reached 32.2C in Kew, west London, on Thursday, making it the warmest day of the year so far, while Friday saw highs of 30.8C recorded in both England and Wales.

Sky News

3 hours ago

• Sky News

Thousands watch summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge - on the hottest day of year

Thousands of people gathered at Stonehenge to watch the summer solstice sunrise, marking the year's longest day - on what is now the hottest day of the year. Temperatures in Charlwood, Surrey hit 32.6C at lunchtime Saturday - beating the 32.2C reached in parts of eastern England on Thursday. Overnight, those gathering at Stonehenge had a warm start, with temperatures in Salisbury and Greater London reaching 18C by 5am, according to the Met Office. The Met Office confirmed "many places" in England and "one or two areas" in Wales, including Cardiff, entered a heatwave on Friday. The forecaster confirmed the highest overnight temperatures were recorded in Yeovilton, in Somerset, and Crosby, in Merseyside, both reaching 19.7C by 6am on Saturday, with towns in Cumbria and Lancashire recording temperatures above 19C. An amber heat-health alert is in place for all regions in England over the weekend. Solstice events at Stonehenge are some of the rare occasions when visitors are allowed to get close to the stones at the World Heritage site, which was built to align with the sun on the solstices. Solstices are believed to have been celebrated at Stonehenge for thousands of years. The summer solstice sees the sun rise behind the Heel Stone, the ancient entrance to the Stone Circle, with rays of sunlight being channelled into the centre of the monument. It takes place as one of the Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt towards the sun as it reaches its highest position in the sky, giving the longest period of daylight for the year and signifying the end of spring. It comes as scattered thunderstorms are set to hit the UK amid continued high temperatures on Saturday, with 34C possible in some areas. The yellow weather warning for thunderstorms covers all of northern England, from Nottingham to up above Newcastle, and will come into force from 3pm and last until 4am on Sunday. The Met Office warned the most intense storms could produce "frequent lightning, large hail and gusty winds, as well as a chance of flooding".

Telegraph

4 hours ago

• Telegraph

Britain is burning – and fire chiefs fear the worst this summer

Wennington is less a village than a line of semi-detached houses stretched out along the B1335 where east London peters out into countryside. I say 'countryside', but it is really marshy wasteland bisected by an elevated stretch of the A13, a busy mainline railway and rows of unsightly pylons. Three years ago, this was the scene of a wildfire that caused unprecedented destruction of UK homes and other property – a wildfire that could well prove a harbinger of what the near, or very near, future holds. Britain has already suffered a record number of wildfires in 2025, following one of the driest springs on record. Natural England's Fire Severity Index presently rates the fire risk across much of the UK as 'very high' – one level below 'exceptional' – and the country faces the very real possibility of a drought this summer. Firefighters are understandably anxious. 'Every day over the last three months, my phone has pinged with another wildfire somewhere in the country,' Paul Garrigan, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), tells me during an interview. 'We wouldn't be having this conversation – to heighten the public awareness of the risk – if I wasn't worried about this summer.' The extraordinary events of July 19, 2022 loom large in the collective memory of Garrigan's fellow fire chiefs. It was the hottest day ever recorded in the UK, with temperatures reaching 40C. It had been preceded by a long spell of warm, dry weather. At about 1pm, for reasons still unknown, a fire broke out where the garden of 21 The Green in Wennington met the dried-out marshland. Fanned by the wind, it raced through the village. Joe Kenny, the incident commander that day, was summoned from Bexley in south-east London. He sped through the Dartford tunnel and stepped out of his car in Wennington to be hit by a wall of heat, a raging fire and billowing black smoke. He could hear gas cylinders exploding in garden sheds. It was immediately obvious that 'the scale of the incident was larger than myself or any other colleagues had experienced', he told me during a rare return to the scene. He declared the fire a 'major incident' and urgently requested 15 pumps (fire engines) instead of the two or three already there. Some firefighters began evacuating nearby homes. Others, using hoses and a local farmer's bowser, rushed to create a firebreak further up the village. Residents later described the blaze as 'apocalyptic'. By the time 100 firefighters had finally brought it under control late that evening, 88 homes had been evacuated, while 17 houses, 12 stables, five garages, an electrical substation, a car repair workshop, several vehicles and numerous outbuildings had been destroyed across an area of 40 hectares. The Grade-II listed church of St Mary and St Peter had been miraculously spared, but the village looked like 'a scene from the Blitz', said one resident. 'This happens in Portugal, this happens in Spain. It doesn't happen in Wennington,' said another. Nor was Wennington the only 'Major Incident' that day. The London Fire Brigade (LFB) experienced its busiest 24 hours since the Second World War. There was another '15-pump' wildfire in nearby Dagenham. In total, the brigade fought 26 blazes requiring four or more pumps, compared with two on an average day. Across the country, 11 of the 46 fire and rescue services reported 'major incidents' – 14 in total – and nearly 100 buildings were destroyed. Homes and buildings were not the only casualties. Wildfires destroy precious wildlife habitats. They close motorways, roads and railway lines. They threaten to overwhelm fire services because the conditions that produce them mean several are likely to be raging simultaneously, 'spreading like wildfire' over large areas and requiring a lot of manpower and fire engines to extinguish. According to the London Fire Brigade: 'There were periods on July 19 2022 when almost all LFB appliances were deployed at incidents across London. This caused significant challenges in transporting and relieving crews and meeting the resource demands... with mutual aid from surrounding brigades stretched to the limit.' 'Incidents are increasing year by year' Today, few visible signs remain of the Wennington blaze – just a lot of rebuilding work, a couple of charred tree trunks and a poem pinned to the village noticeboard which refers to that 'truly horrendous fire'. But the events of that day are etched deep in the psyche of Britain's fire chiefs. For them, it was an epiphany in this age of drastic climate change – and, specifically, persistent dry spells. Never before had a wildfire in Britain destroyed so many homes. And no longer could this country dismiss wildfires on the so-called 'rural-urban interface' – those that threaten built-up areas – as misfortunes that beset only southern Europe or the western United States. That threat is only increasing. By May 8 this year, fire services across England and Wales had already recorded at least 463 wildfires that covered more than a hectare, required at least four fire engines, lasted more than six hours and posed a significant risk to life or property. That was nearly double the 253 recorded in the same period in 2022, which was itself a record-breaking year. According to satellite data compiled by the European Forest Fire Information Service (EFFIS), the UK has already suffered 168 fires of more than 30 hectares this year, with a total of 35,511 hectares burned across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That is an area bigger than Manchester, and comfortably beats all previous records for entire years. Earlier in the 2000s, there were many years with no wildfires at all. Days like 19 July 2022 'are not going away', Garrigan, the NFCC chair and former head of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, told me. 'This is not something we deal with once and won't deal with for another 100 years. These incidents are increasing year by year… this was once a one-in-a-hundred-year event. Now it's a once in a 10-year or five-year or two-year event.' Andy Elliott, a veteran firefighter from Dorset who also runs a wildfire training and consultancy business and does research at Exeter and Birmingham Universities, concurs. 'We're getting more fires, more intense fires and more damaging fires,' he says. The events of July 19 2022 were 'absolutely unprecedented in the UK, but we'll see them again with much more frequency. What's currently happening in Portugal and Spain is moving our way.' Thomas Smith, an environmental scientist at the London School of Economics, explains that the peak of the wildfire season tends to be in March and April, when heaths, moors and woodland are still covered in dead or dormant gorse, heather, bracken and grass that does not 'green up' till early summer. That 'fuel' is becoming more susceptible to fires because warmer, drier spells are starting earlier in the year and lasting longer, he says. In Dorset, for example, the average duration of a warm spell is now between 20 and 30 days, compared to five and 10 days between 1961 and 1990. In Northumberland, it is 10 to 20 days, compared to one to five days in the late 20th century. The result is 'more fires and bigger fires' – primarily because of climate change but also because more people visit the countryside during warmer weather, increasing the risk of accidental ignitions. But even Smith was shocked by the Wennington fire. He and other scientists co-authored a climate change risk assessment in 2020. 'I don't think any of us thought we would see properties being destroyed by fire on the scale we saw in Wennington and Dagenham two years later,' he said. 'We thought maybe in 2030 at the earliest. It was a big, big surprise.' The Government and fire services had begun focusing on the risk of wildfires well before 2022: they had first appeared on the National Risk Register of the most serious threats to Britain as far back as 2015. But since the 19 July fires, the authorities have intensified their efforts to counter this new threat. That day 'was shocking. It surprised a lot of people,' says Elliott. Before it happened 'there was probably a deal of complacency around the potential severity of UK wildfires'. In recent years, the NFCC has established a cohort of about 50 'tactical advisers' to support the UK's fire and rescue services during wildfires. It has created several 'tactical burn teams' to create firebreaks by 'setting fires to stop fires'. Fire chiefs have dispatched officers to southern Europe, South Africa and the US to learn how best to fight huge wildfires. Most firefighters now have to take a basic wildfire awareness course, and their managers a more advanced one. British fire and rescue services cannot afford Californian-style planes and helicopters to fight wildfires, but some have been investing in all-terrain vehicles, four-wheel drive fire engines and big, off-road water-carrying trucks called Unimogs because wildfires often ignite in remote places with poor access. They have bought drones with thermal imaging capabilities that can measure the size, spread and direction of wildfires in real time. Kenny used one at the Wennington fire. 'They give us an absolutely fantastic overview of an incident,' he says. 'They give you a completely different perspective of the sheer scale and where the fire is moving, and for an incident commander, that's absolutely invaluable.' Some fire services have also acquired 'holey-hoses' – long hoses with holes which create two-metre-high 'curtains' of water that can be swiftly deployed to prevent fires spreading. They have purchased lighter protective clothing, backpack sprayers and tools for creating firebreaks. They are running public awareness campaigns ('Bring a picnic, not a barbecue') and have sought to dissuade supermarkets from selling disposable barbecues during heatwaves. Smith is part of a team commissioned by the National Environmental Research Council to develop a fire danger rating system – a sophisticated app for firefighters, landowners and others. It can instantly calculate the risk of fires igniting, and their likely intensity and rate of spread, anywhere in the country based on weather conditions, types of vegetation and their moisture content. Garrigan talks of other technologies in the pipeline, including big, water-carrying drones and 'pre-deployed electric noses' – sensors that can 'smell' wildfires, which would be planted on heaths and moors. The Forestry Commission is running courses on fire management and prevention for landowners. Re-wetting peatlands helps, but less upland grazing and 're-wilding' probably do not. The National Trust, which is one of Britain's largest landowners with 250,000 hectares and 780 miles of coastline, is experimenting with an 'ultra-early' wildfire detection project using solar-powered sensors that deploy artificial intelligence to detect tiny, incipient fires from 100 metres away. 'There's a lot more to be done. I don't think the pace of change is fast enough… I don't think the risk is being taken seriously enough,' says Smith, but measures to counter wildfires do not come cheap – a single new Unimog equipped for firefighting costs roughly £400,000. The NFCC is presently negotiating a new four-year funding settlement (of an undisclosed sum) with the Government and pressing for a significant increase in resources to confront the rising danger of both wildfires and another increasingly common consequence of climate change – severe flooding. 'Am I assured that we're fully resourced for any eventuality? Not at this moment, which is a reason why the so-called Comprehensive Spending Review is pivotal in ensuring we have the right kit, people, equipment and support to at least keep pace with climate change and preferably to get ahead of it,' Garrigan says. 'If we can't get ahead of this, it's only going to become more problematic and more severe.' He points out that the UK's fire and rescue services have 11,000 fewer firefighters than a decade ago due to spending cuts, while the number of incidents they respond to has risen 20 per cent. 'We're way shy of the numbers we need to deal with this kind of emergent risk,' he says. A review of the July 19 2022, fires found that 39 of the London Fire Brigade's fire engines were 'off the run' – out of action – because there were not enough firefighters. Fire chiefs say the general public also needs to become much more aware of the dangers of wildfires. Almost all are started by humans, says Elliott. Most people 'pick up their litter, take glass bottles home, don't carelessly drop cigarettes and don't take disposable barbecues into rural areas,' says Garrigan. But others do. 'During periods of extreme weather, to go out and think it's acceptable to sit in an area of parkland and leave a barbecue behind is beyond me.' 'Human-caused fires' And then there are arsonists. Garrigan readily acknowledges that some of this year's 463 wildfires will have been set deliberately. Elliott says that of the 470 wildfires – big and small – that the Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service tackled in the year that ended on March 31, at least 39, and probably many more, were the work of arsonists. Nor has arson been ruled out as a cause of the Wennington fire. Why do arsonists set fires, I ask? Tess Cross, who oversees the Dorset and Wiltshire brigade's arson reduction programme, says a fair number are set by teenagers through 'boredom, curiosity and peer pressure'. Dominic Pearson, an associate professor of forensic psychology at Portsmouth University, who runs a successful education programme for convicted arsonists for Hampshire's fire service, cites 'boredom, excitement, curiosity, a need for recognition, cries for help and thrill-seeking' as motivating factors, allied with easy access to large, unprotected targets. Elliott – a firefighter for 42 years – drives me to Upton Heath, a rolling expanse of gorse, heather and bracken on the north-western edge of Poole in Dorset. This is Thomas Hardy country. The Heath should be gorgeous, and much of it is. But 52 hectares of it are charred and blackened following a wildfire that erupted shortly before midnight on April 2. It took 12 fire engines, between 70 and 80 firefighters and various other emergency vehicles at least 12 hours to extinguish the blaze, by which time the precious habitat of countless nesting birds, frogs, snakes, lizards, voles, beetles and insects had been destroyed. 'This would be assumed to be arson,' says Elliott as we survey the damage from the top of a low hill. There was no other obvious cause, he says, and notes that another equally inexplicable wildfire broke out at nearby Canford Heath a few hours later. He shows me a video posted on TikTok of a young man cycling along the edge of the blazing heath on a mountain bike at about 1am. There is no evidence to show that the youth was connected to the fire, but the clip begs the question of what he was doing there at that time of night. Elliott also tells me of an anonymous challenge to set the biggest fire in Dorset that was recently posted on social media. He then walks me across the heath to a row of spacious, up-market bungalows bordering the heath. This is Beacon Road which is – in a very real sense – a beacon for the rest of the UK. There was a previous wildfire on Upton Heath in 2011, and on that occasion, Beacon Road's homes had to be evacuated. 'It scared the community,' says Elliott, so they decided to take pre-emptive action. They signed up for a programme called Firewise-UK, which advises residents on how to protect their homes against wildfires, and they now form the longest-running 'Firewise community' in the country. They have cleared the vegetation from a long strip of land between their gardens and the heath in order to form a 'defensible' firebreak, or buffer zone, some 15 metres wide. They have removed wooden fences and garden sheds that might act as conduits for wildfires. They have replaced highly flammable trees and bushes, such as leylandii, with less flammable ones and regularly clear leaves and other combustible material from their gutters, roofs and decks. In the driveways at the front of their homes, the residents now park their cars facing outwards so they can make a quick getaway in an emergency. Inside, says Elliott, they keep 'grab bags' of essential items to take with them. Beside the road itself stand two metal bins containing high-vis jackets, bollards and signs with which to close the cul-de-sac. These measures may sound extreme, says Elliott, but 'climate change is not something for the future. We're in it now, and the best way to prevent a repeat of July 19 2022 is if all those communities adjoining open land were to use Firewise principles. It would dramatically reduce the potential to lose homes.' (The Association for British Insurers confirmed after the summer blazes of 2022 that most home insurance policies cover wildfire damage.) Garrigan would also like to see the measures adopted by the residents of Beacon Road replicated wherever urban areas of Britain face open land in order to 'mitigate and manage the risk' to people's homes. 'You wouldn't want people to learn from their experiences. You'd want them to act now.' The looming possibility of a drought this summer adds to the urgency. Last month, Australian-style wildfire warning signs were erected in the Peak District and south Pennines. Half a dozen heritage railways have already stopped using steam engines in their sheds lest they spark fires. For the same reason, the National Trust chose not to light Dunkery Beacon in Somerset to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, and has warned that 2025 is 'turning out to be the worst year ever for these human-caused fires across the country'. The UK is on 'a fairly dangerous trajectory', says Elliott, adding that 'this could be a challenging summer for us'. Garrigan concurs: 'We've had another warmer, wetter winter so vegetation has grown rapidly, and now we're facing a hot, dry summer. These things combined are really problematic.'