PARAMEDICS have treated a total of 54 people, including 19 who were admitted to hospital, after wildfires broke out across the West Midlands.
The blazes led to thousands of 999 calls on Thursday, the UK’s hottest day of the year, a fire chief said.
The fire service is under “significant pressure” after 11 major incidents were declared across the UK.
In an update on Friday morning, West Midlands Ambulance Service said they had attended “a number of serious fires” across the region “as hot and dry conditions continue”.
The fires included one on Norton Road in Stourbridge, where a total of six patients were treated including a woman and a boy who were taken to hospital due to the effects of smoke inhalation.
West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust chief executive Anthony Marsh said in a statement that Thursday had been an “extremely busy day for our crews”, adding that he was “immensely proud” of his staff.
“With the hot and dry weather we have encountered, we would ask everyone to take extra care and think about the risks before lighting fires or undertaking activities that could cause them,” he said.
“Please also use 999 wisely and only call us when you have a genuine emergency, so our crews can get to those who need us most.”
It comes as Phil Carrigan, chairman of the National Fire Chiefs Council, said the service was dealing with major incidents declared across the UK.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “It’s not just the Stourbridge incident that we’ve dealt with over the last 24 hours.
“We’ve had 11 major incidents declared across the UK – Stourbridge particularly, but Sandwell, Pershore, Stoke-on-Trent. We’ve got incidents still raging in Hampshire, in South Wales.
“It’s been a particularly difficult, busy period for the fire and rescue service, where we’ve been under significant pressure.
“Firefighters have been on the front line of climate change for a number of years. They’re doing their absolute best to protect communities and properties.”
In Stoke-on-Trent roads remain closed as firefighters work at the scene of a large fire that saw some residents in the area evacuated.
Staffordshire Fire and Rescue said crews managed to contain the fire, which started on Thursday afternoon and affected a “small number” of homes and gardens, by around 9pm that night.
Several residents who were evacuated from their homes on Maureen Avenue and Sandy Road were supported overnight by the Goldenhill community centre.
Both roads remain closed as the fire service and Staffordshire Police investigate the cause of the fire.
In a statement, the fire service said: “We appreciate your understanding as we do all we can to minimise disruption to the local community as much as possible.
“Residents who remain in their properties should continue to keep their windows and doors shut as a precaution.”
And, a man whose mother’s home burnt down in a fire in Highters Heath, Birmingham, said she has lost everything, including 100 years’ worth of family photos.
Andrew Reynolds, 42, said he watched his childhood home, along with other terraced houses on Gorleston Road, go up in flames on Thursday evening, which has left his mother Kim Matthews a “wreck”.
Reynolds told the Press Association: “My mum’s lost everything. Absolutely everything. There’s nothing saveable.”
He described the scene on Thursday night as an “inferno” which has left the house, which his mother has lived in for 34 years, destroyed. He said: “Everyone’s gutted, grieving, people have lost so much and no-one can go in to see if they can salvage anything.”
Reynolds said his grandmother’s possessions were in the loft and will have been lost in the fire.
He said: “It’s all gone, including 100 years’ worth of photos from the family.”
In Stourbridge, a woman who was evacuated from her home said she could “see the flames from our bedroom window".
Jane Baxter told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that “the smell is horrendous at the moment, it’s really a choking smell in the air”.
Baxter, whose house backs directly onto the golf course where some of the worst damage was seen, said: “The police knocked our door and said that everyone had to be evacuated quickly because they thought the fire was changing directions, and they didn’t know which direction it was going in.
“So, it was literally grab what you need and get out.
“And within about four or five minutes, the police knocked the door again and said: ‘You really have got to get out now’.
“So, get out we did with the cat and away to go to our son’s house.”
