A deadly wildfire raging in southern Spain has produced terrifying images of landscapes being destroyed, leaving at least 12 people dead and 23 missing.
While wildfires are common in Spain, parts of France and in the Mediterranean, experts are warning that disasters like the blaze in Almería could pose a threat to the UK as well.
They have urged Britain to come to terms with a new reality, where such fires are far more common than they used to be.
At the beginning of this month, the Peak District smouldered as a wildfire burned across Tintwistle Moor.
It is estimated the fire covered roughly 200 hectares, including Dove Stone RSPB nature reserve in Peak District National Park, with firefighters, local land managers and volunteers tackling the blaze for more than a week.
Amid the third heatwave of the year, with plants and soil drying out, land managers and fire services are warning of more large blazes over the summer.
A new outlook
Historically, major wildfires have been rare in the UK, but now, the wildfire season covers the whole of spring and summer, and upland areas such as the Peak District are becoming accustomed to blazes.
The UK saw an unprecedented number of wildfires last year, and by the end of 2025 there had been a total of 181 burning across nearly 48,000 hectares of land.
Dr Thomas Smith, associate professor of environmental geography at LSE, told The i Paper there had been a notable change in the past decade. “Before 2015 or 2016, a year with significant wildfires was the outlier. There was a sharp change about 10 years ago and now that’s more like the norm,” he said.
The flames at Tintwhistle left the ground charred against the green moors (Photo: Brook Mitchell/Getty)So far, 2026 is not on track to surpass last year, but Dr Smith added that a major fire such as Tintwistle, seen so early in the summer, indicates climate change is wreaking havoc on the environment.
“The second fire season is in the summer where we see grass drying out in the heatwave. The fact that grassland and moors are already catching alight suggests that they are very stressed by the heat,” said Smith.
The rural-urban danger zone
The big future danger in the UK, experts say, is the risk of more fires at the point where rural landscapes meet inhabited ones – the rural-urban interface.
Rob Stacey, wildfire team leader at Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service, said he had recently returned from a trip to Texas, learning about how to combat this type of dangerous fire. He said it required different tactics which were “different from open ground” because of the need to take account of housing.
A fire engine near Alfaix during deadly wildfires in the Almería region in Spain (Photo: Stringer/Reuters)He added: “It’s more important in the future because we will have more fires at that rural-urban interface. In some circumstances it is too dangerous, so it’s best to leave them.
“The rural-urban interface is growing, we are seeing more fires and they are bigger. Once you come off the countryside, fire behaves very differently because there’s more fuel. I don’t think any of our fire services are experts at that yet. Because we’ve been quite lucky so far.”
There have been instances of wildfires reaching neighbourhoods in the UK before. In 2022, homes were destroyed after a wildfire swept through a row of terraced houses in Wennington, in the London borough of Havering. It had started on a nearby country park, before reaching people’s homes
Learning from other countries
Ten years ago, LSE professor Tom Smith had accompanied a group of British firefighters on a trip to Catalonia as part of an initiative to learn how they tackle wildfires there.
He said it was helpful to learn how to “plan about outdoor fires, because that’s very different to what our firefighters train for usually”. This required “very different techniques” from the house and commercial fires most urban fire services are used to.
“The Spanish will look at a landscape and compartmentalise which parts to be worried about and how to contain it,” he said. “The Spanish have been doing for a long time and it’s very complex, looking at who owns the land, access, and building a model of what fires might look like in that landscape.
“It’s more about analysis and mapping, so identifying these pinch points is the best chance we’ve got.”
A burning home during the Los Angeles wildfires last year (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP)Stacey agrees that learning from other countries is paramount – but also says it was important the UK develops its own specific systems to account for our environment.
For instance, Britain currently uses a Fire Severity Index via the Met Office, but this system was borrowed from Canada, so it is tailored to their climate and habitat. “It’s kind of an imperfect system based on conditions from another country. Isn’t as accurate as we want,” he said.
Experts are working on a fire danger rating system which would be adapted to the UK’s landscape.
Stacey said there were positive moves towards this in the UK, but it “requires funding and requires computing power”. In general, he added, we need to “invest more time and money into mitigation”.
Individual responsibility
Stacey emphasised that British people will have to take more individual responsibility for wildfire risk around their homes. steps that are common in the US will have to be employed more here too, he said – such as regularly clearing dead leaves from gutters.
He added: “It’s not second nature for us to think about how we manage our own property. Not like it is in Spain, Canada or the US. That level of individual responsibility – we will probably see more about that.”
Other practices could include leaving back gates open, making it harder for fire to spread along wooden fencing and between adjacent houses; and not growing vegetation up against buildings, making it harder for flames to jump from garden to house.
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