We attended more than 20 field fires yesterday including a large field fire near Langford Road, Wickham Bishops.

Eight crews worked to extinguish a large fire that spread across eight hectares of grass and woodland.

Crews surround the fire and extinguished it by 7:22pm.

In hot and dry weather, people can help prevent fires if they:

Update as at 8am on 14/08/22 - aerial photos added

This incident has been updated with aerial images taken from our drone, which we used at the scene to enable our firefighters to see what has happening from above so they could get ahead of the fire.

Crews were called back to the scene at 9.36am on Saturday 13 August with reports of multiple tree stumps smouldering.

This incident has now been closed.

In total we used 12 hose reel jets, two off road vehicles and a large number of beaters and back pack sprayers to deal with the fire.

Update as at 2.45pm on 14/08/2022

Firefighters have returned to the area this morning to dampen down some hotspots.

In attendance at this incident:

2 x Harlow, 1 x Waltham Abbey, 1 x Epping, 1 x Loughton, 1 x Brentwood, 1 x Witham (Incident Command Unit), 1 x Stansted (Off Road Vehicle), 1 x Newport, 1 x Leaden Roding, 1 x Chelmsford, 1 x Corringham (Water Tanker), 2 x USAR, 1 x Thaxted, 1 x Walthamstow (LFB), 1 x Bishop's Stortford (Herts)

Update at 7.45am on 15/08/2022

Attendance at the scene since Saturday.

1 x Rayleigh Weir, 1 x Canvey, 1 x Leigh, 1 x Basildon, 1 x Hawkwell plus Incident Command Unit, 1 x Clacton, 2 x Chelmsford plus Off Road Vehicle, 2 x Southend, 2 x USAR Lexden, 1 x Tiptree, 1 x Grays, 1 x Wickford, 1 x Wennington (LFB), 1 x Billericay Off Road Vehicle, 1 x Weeley, 1 x Braintree, 1 x Burnham Off Road Vehicle, 1 x Stansted Off Road Vehicle, 1 x Great Baddow, 1 x Orsett, 1 x Rochford

Crews left the area at 00.38 today, all remaining hotspots have been dealt with.

Ten fire crews have been dealing with a field fire in Buckingham Hill Road, Linford, this afternoon.

A 200 metre square area of land was affected with firefighters working hard in difficult terrain to stop the spread of the fire.

Station Manager Dan Kirk said: “It was a challenging area to access but once again our firefighters worked incredibly hard and contained the fire. They did a great job.”

Please continue to help our crews by being wildfire aware during this long spell of hot dry weather.

You can help prevent fires and support our firefighters by:

Ten crews and an off road vehicle dealt with a field fire in Gilden Way, Harlow, yesterday evening.

They were called at 4.54pm to reports of three hectares of grass and 200 metres of hedgerow alight.

Firefighters worked quickly to surround two separate seats of fire which were a quarter of a mile apart as they tackled a blaze on land off North View Avenue, Tilbury.

They were called at 2.14pm and dealt with the fire by 3.44pm.

The cause of the fire is thought to be deliberate.

Crews remained on scene until just after 5.30pm.

We see an increase in deliberate fires during the summer months. Help us to prevent them by getting in touch with FireStoppers. 

As well as some large field fires across the county yesterday which we had to send lots of resources to, our crews continued to deal with number of smaller fires across Essex as well as attending road traffic incidents and other calls.

They have been working extremely hard in difficult conditions.

Please help them today by:

Firefighters rescued two 19-week-old kittens after they became stuck behind a toilet fitting in Witham on Sunday evening.

The two kittens, called River (pictured - darker cat) and Flo, had worked their way between a small gap between the back of a toilet and a wall and become trapped.

Firefighters from our Urban Search and Rescue team, based at Lexden, used specialist equipment including a snake eye camera to see the two cats in the small area before safely freeing them.

Firefighters were called to reports of a field fire in Mountnessing on Tuesday evening.

Smoke from the fire could be seen from the A12 and the nearby train line, prompting multiple emergency calls to our Control team.

On arrival, crews reported that four hectares (around 40,000 square metres) were alight.

Firefighters worked hard to get the fire under control quickly. The fire was extinguished by 5.45pm.

We are not treating this fire as suspicious.