Annual

Well it is that time of year again. Grass fire time. Wanstead Flats is being repeatedly set on fire by either idiots or full-on arsonists. In July the bit to the east of Alex went up again, it had just about recovered from the last fire. We lost about ten acres on Monday in the SSSI, and at some point in the the last few days an area near Angel Pond has disappeared as well as a new part of the SSSI.

Motorcycle Wood

It's annual now. Each year by late July the patch is tinder dry, fires just waiting to happen. This was a major fire. I was coming home on the bus on Monday and could see fire engines and blue lights everywhere, towers of smoke and flame. As you can see above Motorcycle wood has been saved by the monumental efforts of around 70 firefighters, but it has been burned on all four sides. 

Walking around the area a few days later, I came across this:

Is it any wonder? When will these things be banned - they're for sale in shops about two minutes walk from Wanstead Flats, prominently displayed outside on the pavement as you walk towards Forest Gate. This falls into the idiot category of course, but I do wonder if these fires are more sinister. They seem to be so close together, only a day or so apart. The cynic in me thinks about someone looking on in delight as all this goes on, and when that high has diminished creeps out and starts another one. Who knows? As far as I know none of these fires have ever been traced to anyone, including the massive one a few years back that nearly caused my street to be evaculated in case it crossed the road. Those flames were several metres tall, I remember the whole area being in a cloud of smoke, it was like something out of Apocalypse Now.

Angel

This is our future. Annual fires destroying the habitat, more pressure on breeding sites and feeding areas. And it seems only a matter of time before one of these coincides with a hot and very windy day and it becomes more than a grass fire. Let us cross our fingers that never happens. Anyway, that's the news from the patch as autumn begins.

Another fire on Wanstead Flats

A bonus post I'm afraid, two in a day. The reason is that there has been another fire on Wanstead Flats, almost exactly two years after the very large grass fire in 2018. Thankfully this appears to be a lot smaller, but the tale is a familiar one. It was around lunchtime and I was in the garden hanging up the washing when I started to smell smoke. Then the kids playing a few doors down commented that it was getting foggy (bless them), and then as my garden started to fill with smoke it was the mad rush inside to try and close all the door and windows on this 30 degree day.

Tinder dry

I ventured out after work to see the damage for myself. It has been on the cards for a while, just yesterday I was saying to some of the others how dry it was and how we had been lucky to not have any major fires. Well we spoke too soon. The area is at the south of the acid grasslands, near Centre Road car park and south copse. It's big, but not catastrophically so, and as far as I am aware there were no Skylark attempting to breed there. Nonetheless it is another eyesore that will take a while to recover, and perhaps result in more drastic fire-prevention measures such as clearance to make fire breaks

The area impacted today in red, versus the fire in July 2018

There were still four or five appliances on site at around 5.30pm, with crews continuing to damp down parts of it which were still smoking. As I left the house Nick reported a new fire south of the original location, and as I got home I could hear more sirens going off and another large plume of smoke rising. The possibility of this not being an unfortunate disposable BBQ accident remains, a thrill-seeking arsonist playing cat and mouse with the fire brigade perhaps. Let's hope that isn't the case, but regardless, as long as the weather stays like this and as long as people continue to treat our local green spaces like gigantic rubbish dumps this is always a likely outcome. 

I take heart from the fact that last time this happened the regeneration was remarkably rapid all things considered, and in matter of weeks green started to emerge through the brown and black. The final photo is what one of the worst hit areas looks like now, two years on. Had you not known what it was like before, with thick broom four feet tall and loads of heather, you would never have thought that there had been a fire at all. For now though the Crows are picking through it for chargrilled morsels of unlucky invertebrates, and we have another acrid black scar on the patch.

Signs of life

With five posts in the space of  a week you would be forgiven for thinking that the title of this blog post was self-referential. Not to worry, there is little danger of that. But I did want to share a few photos that I took earlier today on a short walk around the SSSI - the part of Wanstead Flats that was the most severely burned. There are signs of life. I've been a little selective, there are still enormous swathes of pure black, but as we all knew after fire comes renewal, and in a way that can be very beautiful. One of my other hobbies (other than blogging) is growing plants. For certain of these, particularly those from Australia, fire is an essential part of the cycle of life, and is needed to stimulate reproduction. I have a cycad that was imported from Queenland many years ago which has a trunk that is entirely blackened from numerous grass fires. The trunk, formed from dead leaf bases, is impenetrable - fire sweeps through burning all in its path, possibly including the leaves of the plants, but the core plant itself is not damaged - this heat and the nutrients from the burned vegetation causes the plants to grow new leaves and seed cones. This sight of a blackened landscape with these incredible bright green flushes of new growth can be quite awesome. 

Wanstead Flats cannot boast anything quite as exciting, but the contrast between black and fresh green is still pretty magical. We had an absolute drenching on Friday evening, and as I type it is coming down again. I don't know whether it is this recent water or whether it was the damping down from the Fire Brigade that started the regeneration, but either way it looks wonderful and I found it extremely uplifting and am very encouraged. No birds yet of course, it is still a wasteland in that respect when in fact it should be buzzing with young warblers, and that is a crying shame. The low point has passed though, and we are on the up.

The aftermath of the Wanstead Flats fire

I ventured out to Wanstead Flats this morning, a week after the fire took told. As well as simply being busy I hadn't really been ready before. I'd been hearing second-hand news, snippets and views, some brave attempts at positivity. The Skylark area escaped. The copses are singed but in one piece. The heather which has been slowly expanding for a decade has nearly been destroyed but a small part survived. It was the area nearest to me, the SSSI, that I was most concerned about. This is one of my favourite areas as it is far less disturbed, and it was also the area that saw the fiercest fire and where the blaze started. 

It has been decimated, there is no other word for it. The rich belt of scrub alongside Lakehouse Road - a haven for Warblers and which once held one of the Wrynecks - is almost totally gone. A few blackened trunks, a few stands of scorched broom, mostly just ash. The absence of bird song was poignant. A few Crows pecked about in the ruins, some Magpies chased each other through the slalom of charred sticks. The fire is out, but it smells terrible. This is the part of the Flats closest to where I live, the part that I get to first. It is going to be hard going crossing the threshold, seeing a blackened expanse where once there was greenery and life. You might I think I am being overly dramatic, but just come visit. It is unspeakable.

I crossed Centre Road, just as the fire had done last Sunday, driven by the breeze. By this point there were more LFB resources on site, and thankfully they have managed to limit the damage. Nonethless it extends almost to the far eastern end of Long Wood. What the Corporation didn't destroy in the Enclosure the flames have finished off. The best area of the Flats for migrants has been razed. The view from the Vizmig point has been altered beyond desciption. Where once were areas of broom interspersed with Hawthorn there are charcoal remains. Some of this area has been ploughed already by the landowner, either to create a better firebreak for what is left to the south, or to aid regeneration.

Should be easy to spot the migrants in the bushes.....

There are no signs of vegetative regeneration as yet, but this is not surprising really. There was a slight sprinkling early yesterday, but it is bone dry extending out all of next week. What we need is an enormous soaking, something to get the richness of the ash down into the soil to nourish any roots or seeds that might have survived the heat. In past fires the bright green of new growth pushing through the black scars has always seemed somehow magical. When it eventually happens this time it will seem even more so, but let's be clear - this was an enormous fire, intense and destructive. London's biggest in modern times, large enough to be declared a wildfire. That it is on my patch is just awful.

This is sample - it like this almost everywhere

Not all the people who live here feel the same way about it of course, anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that the area is heavily used. The fire has exposed what they have left behind, and it beggars belief. Alcohol is the most obvious relic, the numbers of charred bottles and cans that have been exposed is remarkable. Years, probably, of people tossing their empties into the scrub as they walk along. So much easier than taking it home, or putting it a bin or recycling container. No, just chuck it. Possibly the fire is the result of cigarette butt following a can a short while later. A portable bbq that got out of hand? Or arson of course? We will probably never know, but part of me hopes it wasn't deliberate. That said, part of the Park was set on fire near the stables yesterday, and school is out. I suspect we'll be seeing more of the Fire Brigade this summer. Probably not near me though, there is nothing left to burn. I dread to think how many animals or fledgling second broods perished? 

Some things that it would have been nice to incinerate survived

50:50

What I can say is that birding this autumn is going to be very hard. Having been out this morning I am deeply put off spending time there. Everywhere I look I remember birds, remember what used to be there. The patch where the Dartford Warbler was. The Wryneck bush. The bushes where I saw my first Flats Bullfinch. A Pied Flycatcher spent two days there. The tiny Hawthorn where I counted double figures of Whitethroat one autumn morning. The patch of scrub where I found my first spring Whinchat and for a few moments had no idea what it was such was its blazing colour.