The hills are ablaze! Wildfires spark across bone-dry Britain after hottest winter day on record – as Britons bask in last blast of three-day Inferno February

Orange flames soared into the sky across Britain today following the warmest winter’s day since records began. An area of around 370 acres (1.5 sq km) burning on Saddleworth Moor in West Yorkshire could be seen for miles around as witnesses described the ‘terrible’ scene of a half-mile wall of fire coming close to houses. Five fire engines and two specialist moorland firefighting units were at the scene, with incident commander Laura Boocock admitting it was one of the biggest grass fires she had ever seen, but it was ‘nothing they can’t handle’. The blaze near Marsden started at 7.30pm and quickly spread to cover 250 acres, forcing the closure of the A62. Witness Harry Broughton tweeted: ‘Never seen anything like this – had a drive up as these things look terrible.’ Dramatic photos show the scale of the raging inferno as crews battled through the night to contain it, and smoke could still be seen from 20 miles away before it was extinguished by lunchtime. Elsewhere, in East Sussex two fires started within an hour at Ashdown Forest as several huge blazes broke out around the country yesterday amid the unprecedented February weather that saw temperatures hit 21C (70F). Meanwhile… Read full this story

The hills are ablaze! Wildfires spark across bone-dry Britain after hottest winter day on record - as Britons bask in last blast of three-day Inferno February have 254 words, post on www.dailymail.co.uk at February 27, 2019. This is cached page on xBlogs. If you want remove this page, please contact us.