The day climate change came to Barnsley will never be forgotten - Jayne Dowle

Homes razed to the ground by wildfires spread by intense heat and powerful winds belonged in another country, until Tuesday afternoon.

I was attempting to work at the (north-facing) kitchen table and my daughter, Lizzie, and her friend sat in the living room with all the windows closed, blinds down, two fans, their books and the suffering dog.

Lizzie called out – ‘‘mum, there’s a house on fire near your old school, it’s on Facebook’’. And then I got an alert too and saw that two houses were now ablaze on Woodlands Drive, only about two miles from where I live.

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'It all just went up': Barnsley residents tell of flames sweeping through homes ...
Houses in Woodlands Drive, Barnsley that were destroyed by fire on a day when the United Kingdom recorded its hottest temperature ever. Picture: Lee McLean/SWNS.Houses in Woodlands Drive, Barnsley that were destroyed by fire on a day when the United Kingdom recorded its hottest temperature ever. Picture: Lee McLean/SWNS.
Houses in Woodlands Drive, Barnsley that were destroyed by fire on a day when the United Kingdom recorded its hottest temperature ever. Picture: Lee McLean/SWNS.
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This wasn’t some remote rural spot surrounded by vegetation, but a small estate of mostly social housing, including the post-war pre-fabs which burnt to the ground in minutes, destroying everything within and leaving families with nothing but the clothes they escaped in. Local people immediately rallied round with fundraising and donation campaigns asking for nightwear and school uniforms for traumatised children.

It took me a slow (I blame the heat) 10 minutes or so to connect the fact that the broiling sun and the gathering afternoon breeze could even be a factor.

Although obviously there will be an investigation into the blaze, which eventually destroyed six houses, it was clear to anyone who witnessed it that the intense heat – Tuesday was recorded as the UK’s hottest day ever, with temperatures of 40C – had something to do with it.

South Yorkshire police rapidly declared a major incident as fires broke out across the sub-region, with tinder-dry fields setting alight and huge plumes of smoke closing roads and causing traffic chaos.

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I’m not one for being nannied by ominous government warnings and had resolved, like many others, to simply sit out the two-day heatwave in the sure and certain knowledge that it would eventually pass. And yes, I’m a ‘‘76er’’, who can remember that long, hot summer of my childhood, when standpipes appeared on the streets.

This week however, this fire and the many others around the UK which devastated homes and businesses in an instant, was something really quite different. It should make us all stop and think about what we understand about our rapidly changing climate.

As one Woodlands Drive resident said in the awful aftermath: “It was an absolute nightmare… I haven’t really thought about climate change before but I feel the future generations will. I have two sons and grandchildren and this is what we are leaving them with.”

If government, national, regional and local, ever needed a warning, this was it. And not just about the terrifying consequences of rising temperatures, although this week it’s been reported that the UK was hotter than more 98 per cent of the rest of the Earth.

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There are questions being asked already about the safety of the many other post-war pre-fab homes in the Barnsley area. Intended only as stop-gap measure to plug a previous housing crisis, there are hundreds still dotted about. Residents are not going to feel safe sleeping in their beds this summer; urgent action must be taken to put fire-prevention measures in place, and consideration given to replacing the properties, surely, especially in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster.

The geo-political debate can rage as hard as any fire, but it is clear that we can no longer ignore the threat to life that our over-heating planet now holds. At the very least, a task-force with the urgency of COBRA must be put into place to prevent a re-run of the ferocious events of this week.

Our homes must be built more safely, our transport infrastructure strengthened and improved to withstand extreme temperatures, fire and rescue ramped up, and our essential services, including electricity, given the public money they need to ensure safe and continuous supply, whatever the weather.

At the same time as the fire raged on Woodlands Drive, an electricity outage plunged a nearby area powerless and everyone was on social media complaining that their home/office internet had gone down. A first-world problem in the scheme of things perhaps, but not when so much business is done online now and so many livelihoods, including my own, depend on it.

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Boris Johnson’s promises on net zero by 2050 are admirable, but at the same time government must also do all in its power to prepare for future catastrophes and protect citizens and the economy.

As I gingerly watered the wizened garden at 10pm that night, mindful of the shortage of water and the threat of a hosepipe ban, the slightly cooler evening air carried the smouldering aura of the smoke shimmering on the horizon. I took a moment to look out across the valley and felt incredibly sad and powerless; this was the day that climate change came home to Barnsley.

It will never be forgotten.