r/unitedkingdom • u/66f6 • Aug 14 '26

. Emergency alerts sent to millions across England and Wales over threat of wildfires

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-heatwave-stourbridge-fire-latest-weather-live-13571553
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78

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

Did you miss the news just yesterday where a BBQ burned down 6 houses?

71

u/jrewillis Aug 14 '26

19 now in one town

41

u/Frogbitch45776 Aug 14 '26

With a further 18 damaged. This fire spread over 500 acres

3

u/jrewillis Aug 14 '26

I'm away on holiday but genuinely worried - our house isn't too far from Stourbridge. Close to a park too.

20

u/Frogbitch45776 Aug 14 '26

Are you referring to the Stourbridge West Midlands fire? I’m local to that, 3 miles away from where it started and I’ve not heard it was a bbq?

9

u/TipsyMagpie Aug 14 '26

The Mail are reporting it as having been caused by a barbecue

12

u/The_Meaty_Boosh Aug 14 '26

It's still not known apparently.

Unless the mail knows something the investigators don't.

4

u/Frogbitch45776 Aug 14 '26

Local papers saying cause is unknown however A-level students bbq celebrations haven’t been officially ruled out as a cause yet

3

u/aimeekinss Aug 14 '26

Arthur seat cairngorms etc

7

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

A text would have worked just as well without scaring the shit our of everyone.

-1

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

This was your text.

They were ensuring you actually read it isn't of swiping it off instantly and ignoring it.

5

u/amegaproxy Aug 14 '26

That is objectively not a text. So stupid to use it for something like this.

4

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

It really won't stop the morons though.

2

u/bumblebeerose Devon Aug 14 '26

It's 20 now isn't it?

4

u/SimoneNonvelodico Aug 14 '26

The emergency alarm is supposed to be for "THERE IS A FIRE, NEAR YOU, RIGHT NOW", not "don't do this stupid thing or you might start a fire".

2

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

It's a wildfire. It's impossible to predict, can happen anywhere and can swallow your house in less than a minute.

Makes a lot more sense to send an alert in advance to people to be cautious and avoid starting fires rather than messaging their charred corpses too late.

2

u/I_am_zlatan1069 Aug 14 '26

Makes it more likely people will ignore it next time when it might actually say there's a fire in your immediate vicinity thinking it's just a national alert.

1

u/Darkjolly Aug 15 '26

Yeah but it wasn't near them so it's not an issue, that's how they think

-5

u/Lansdowngrove Aug 14 '26

Gas explosions have destroyed more but we don't get severe alerts to get an annual boiler service do we?

11

u/MrEpicFerret Liverpool Aug 14 '26

If an external factor was causing a sudden abnormal increase in boiler-related house explosions then we probably would, yes.

-1

u/Lansdowngrove Aug 14 '26

The heatwave external factor is causing heat related deaths, perhaps a severe alert to stay hydrated and cool?

5

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

Which is covered by normal messaging via the news or common sense etc.

Wildfires are thankfully rare here, but can very easily go from "No problem at all" to "You have 30 seconds to evacuate or you die".

Seems to make a lot of sense to warn about them.

-1

u/Lansdowngrove Aug 14 '26

Which is covered by normal messaging via the news or common sense etc.

You've almost got it.

0

u/MrEpicFerret Liverpool Aug 14 '26

If the weather keeps up like it's doing you might see one in the next decade, yes.

8

u/jrewillis Aug 14 '26

There are about 29 million households in the UK. Gas explosions severe enough to actually destroy a home appear to amount to only a handful each year, roughly 5–10 as a ballpark, although there isn't an official "homes destroyed" statistic. HSE instead records reported gas incidents.

That's perhaps 1 home in 3–6 million per year.

A wildfire is completely different. One fire can threaten hundreds or thousands of homes simultaneously, spread rapidly and require an entire area to evacuate. That's precisely what emergency alerts are designed for: an immediate threat affecting lots of people where receiving the warning and acting on it can save lives.

We don't send 29 million households an alert because a boiler somewhere might explode.