Residents whose village homes were destroyed in a wildfire on the UK’s hottest day ever fear tinder-dry grassland and recent blazes just a mile away risk turning their lives upside again.
Eighteen houses were razed to the ground in Wennington, east London, as 40.2°C heat fanned flames that swept across grassland and incinerated properties on 19 July, 2022.
Families were forced to flee as walls of flame-ravaged homes with fire leaping across the main road through the village in the borough of Havering.
Shorts
It was one of London Fire Brigade’s busiest days since the Blitz in World War Two with 2,496 calls, 740 relating to wildfires as a ring of flames erupted around the capital’s outer edges.
