Burnham Sends Troops to Fight Wildfires as PM Bans BBQs

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has imposed a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues and deployed military personnel to help tackle wildfires across the country.

Announcing the measures on Friday from the hard-hit West Midlands, Burnham said they were brought in because of continuing waves of hot weather and severe drought conditions. He said the scale of the blazes had left homes destroyed, people forced to evacuate and firefighters injured while trying to protect others.

“We cannot accept this as the new normal,” Burnham said in a video address. He described the fires in the region as having “destroyed homes, forced people to evacuate and left firefighters injured while protecting others”.

Temporary Barbecue Ban

Burnham said the ban on disposable barbecues was among the emergency steps agreed to reduce the risk of new fires during the current period of extreme weather. He said the situation was being worsened by prolonged dry conditions affecting large parts of England and Wales.

He added that farmers were seeing crops fail and that firefighters had dealt with hundreds of wildfires in recent weeks. Burnham said the conditions reflected “what climate change looks like here and now”, during his remarks.

Military Support And Funding

The prime minister said the government decided on the barbecue ban, emergency funding for fire and rescue services and the deployment of military support during a meeting of COBRA, the government’s emergency response committee, earlier in the week.

Burnham said the response was needed both to manage the fires and to address the underlying causes of climate change, adding that Britain should improve its resilience to extreme weather rather than treat it as inevitable.

Heat Records Amid Drought

Burnham’s announcement came a day after the Met Office reported that temperatures in London had reached 100.6 degrees, described as the fifth-hottest day on record in the UK’s history.

He said Thursday’s extreme temperatures meant Britain had already recorded the highest number of days at or above 97 degrees this year, with four such days, and at least 98 degrees on three days. The number of days reaching 100 degrees had also matched the total seen in 2022, with two days.

The prime minister said much of England and Wales remained in drought, with another spell of extreme heat expected.

Forecast Points To Limited Rain

As the weekend began, forecasters predicted cooling from north to south, but little rain was expected to ease conditions. Steven Keates of the Met Office said a front moving south eastwards across the UK on Monday and Tuesday could bring some rain to northern areas, but that totals for the south would be small.

Keates said the majority of precipitation would fall over Northern Ireland and Scotland, and that the next meaningful rainfall for the very dry areas was not expected until towards the end of next week, when low pressure influences weather from the southwest.

The government has already announced plans to support the development of nine new water reservoirs and improve resilience to future droughts, floods and other extreme weather. It has also said it will invest nearly $135 million to strengthen the country’s response to wildfires and extreme weather.

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15 August 2026

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