Government must ‘face up to reality’ on climate crisis, Fire Brigades Union leader says
"As firefighters, we're getting quite impatient at politicians talking about the role that firefighters take in these incidents and the craziness across the summer, with no real direction about how they're going to fix it."
The government needs to ‘face up to reality’ on the climate crisis, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union Steve Wright has said. Wright made the comments at a fringe meeting at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.
Wright was critical of the government’s response to wildfires that took place during in the heatwaves that hit the UK this summer.
Wright told the meeting: “As firefighters, we’re getting quite impatient at politicians talking about the role that firefighters take in these incidents and the craziness across the summer, with no real direction about how they’re going to fix it.
“I was quite disappointed with the government and their take – that if you ban disposable barbecues that will stop wildfires, that if we had more aeroplanes and helicopters that would put out housefires in Stourbridge.
“It’s firefighters that put out fires in our communities, it’s the fire and rescue service – our members – that are stretched beyond breaking point, dealing with the incidents that their dealing with.”
Wright would go on to say that the government needs to ‘face up to reality’ on the climate crisis. He told the meeting: “So we need to get serious, we need to make sure that people really do understand what we need to fix this crisis. And it’s not just politicians grabbing headlines of ‘we ban barbecues’ and that’s going to fix things. I can categorically tell you as a 25-year firefighter it’s not going to do that.
“We need the government to face up to reality, and I think trade unions need to play an important part in this.”
The fringe meeting was hosted by the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group.
The FBU has long been one of the more vocal trade unions calling for more action from the government on the climate crisis and to prevent wildfires.
The union’s ‘Wildfire Resilience Campaign’ sets out what the FBU wants to see done to prevent devastation caused by wildfires. Among other things, the union wants to see the hiring of 5,000 more firefighters, wildfire training and standards for all firefighters, and improved land management and public awareness to prevent wildfires.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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