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.
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.
Many Wennington residents left homeless in 2022 spent more than three and a half years in temporary accommodation as their houses were rebuilt and only moved back earlier this year.
But those who have returned fear ongoing wildfires in Rainham – just a mile away – could spread to Wennington, with concerns grass in land surrounding their houses has been left to grow too high.
Temperatures are tipped to hit 38°C on Thursday and an amber heat warning issued.
The 1,017 wildfires in England and Wales so far this year is already more than in all of 2025. The Prime Minister chaired an emergency Cobra meeting this week about the extreme heat, as he considers a ban on disposable barbecues.
‘We’re at risk of disaster repeating itself’
Nine of the 10 homes on Marine Cottages on Wennington Road were destroyed in 2022, including the property of Ade Aofolaju, 54, and his partner Paula James, 62, who moved back to their rebuilt home in March.
Paula James, who lost her Wennington home in 2022, says the smell of smoke from other wildfires in the area brings back memories of the inferno four years ago (Photo: Joe Duggan)Mr Aofolaju told The i Paper: “We’re very anxious about the constant field fires in the Rainham area.
“There are quite a few large fields near us on Wennington Road which have not been cut for years so the grass has grown really tall and with the hot weather and no rain, the fields are tinder dry.
“If a fire starts in any of the nearby fields, we would be at risk of the same disaster of 2022 repeating itself.”
Ms James said smoke from grass fires in nearby parts of Havering, which suffers more wildfires than any London borough, reminds them of the 2022 inferno.
‘You can tase the smoke in the morning’
“You wake up in the morning and you can taste it. The blinds are coated,” she said.
“When you can see smoke in the distance it takes you back to when I was coming home from work, driving down the road [in 2022] and you could see the smoke.”
Four years ago, she evacuated her home, grabbing a set of clothes before heading to her mother’s house, where she watched on TV as their home burned down.
Photos of her mother, who died last year, as well as her ring and photos of her partner’s parents, who passed away before the fire, were among precious belongings that went up in flames.
She raised concerns about a lack of firebreaks being cut in land next to their homes, with grass in a field opposite several feet high and bone dry.
Ade Aofolaju,54, and Paula James, 62, lost their home in the Wennington fire but say more must be done to protect their properties from the risk of a another devastating blaze (Photo: Supplied)Her next door neighbour Lynn Sabberton, 76, recalled how a policeman kicked in her door and told her and her partner, Terry Spencer, who had COPD, to flee their house in 2022.
“When the fire came across this way it hit a lot of those bushes and shrubs and trees and then it came here,” she said.
“It was like, literally a bomb dropped on the place.”
With no car and with her partner unable to walk, they were rescued by Ms James who drove them away.
She said she was concerned about thick grassland continuing to grow on farmland opposite her home, which she says has not been cut.
Anita Holtom, 77, is concerned about how tall the grass has grown on farmland that backs on to her garden in Wennington (Photo: Joe Duggan)‘Nothing has been done’
Charlotte Hammond, 37, whose house survived the 2022 blaze but whose garden was destroyed, had to escape with her three-year-old son as thick smoke and flames approached their home.
“I was hysterical,” she recalled, but other blazes nearby are now a constant cause of anxiety.
Recurring underground fires at an illegal landfill site in Launders Lane about a mile and a half away have been dubbed the Rainham Volcano, while firefighters have battled wildfires that destroyed acres of land at a country park, Ingrebourne Hill about two miles away.
“Sometimes I do wake up and you get the smell of smoke. Every time you see a bit of smoke, you just think, where’s it coming from? Is it happening again?” Ms Hammond said.
She said “nothing has been done” about the grass on farmland opposite their home, where ruins are all that remains of a farmhouse that burned down in 2022.
Other land to the back of their homes was cut back a few weeks ago, she said.
Charlotte Hammond fled with her three-year-old son when the fire erupted in Wennington in 2022 (Photo: Joe Duggan)Just along Wennington Road, the 77-year-old Anita Holtom’s home backs onto land where the grass has grown about five feet tall.
She said nearby fires meant they had to “keep the window shut because the smell is so bad here”.
Residents say they have raised concerns about the risk of wildfires with local councillors and MP Margaret Mullane. They want privately-owned land to be made safer.
Ms Mullane, Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, said the residents were “quite right to complain”.
“As we go into climate change and the kind of summers we’re having, it seems to be here to stay. So we’re going to have to get a proper structure. We can’t go on like this.”`
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