Overview
- The government sent a rolling emergency wildfire alert from 7pm on Friday that rang on phones across England and Wales and audibly interrupted The One Show’s 20th‑anniversary live broadcast.
- The alert warned people not to light anything that could start a fire, explicitly naming disposable barbecues, firepits, garden incinerators and fireworks and urging immediate calls to 999 for any sighting of fire.
- Ministers said the deployment was the largest use of the UK emergency mobile alert system to date and ordered short‑term measures including a temporary ban on disposable barbecues and the dispatch of 100 additional military personnel to major incident areas.
- The alert followed extreme‑heat‑driven blazes that have stretched local services and caused large‑scale damage in places such as Stourbridge, where fires burned across hundreds of acres and destroyed homes while injuring residents and firefighters.
- The emergency mobile alert system is designed to reach compatible phones quickly and officials say the message is intended to reduce behaviour that could spark more fires while they coordinate a summit of fire chiefs, unions and local leaders to manage the response.