Major wildfire rips through Suffolk heath near Sizewell B

A wildfire burned across almost 250 acres of Dunwich Heath on the Suffolk coast, forcing evacuations and triggering a major incident as crews raced to protect homes, a caravan park and a protected National Trust landscape. The fire broke out near Leiston and sent smoke across one of east Suffolk’s most sensitive stretches of heathland.

Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service declared a major incident because of the blaze’s size and complexity. Firefighters moved in from across the county, with Suffolk County Council saying crews were using specialist equipment including Unimogs, drones and 4x4 quad bikes. Officials said the fire was spreading rapidly south-west towards St James’ Church, off Westleton Road, while later footage from the scene showed about 90 firefighters and 15 fire appliances deployed.

The immediate danger was to people and the heath itself, not the nearby reactor. Sizewell B nuclear power station was about four miles from the fire, close enough to sharpen public concern but far enough that the blaze was not expected to reach it. The wildfire also did not pose a threat to nearby Sizewell nuclear sites, underlining the difference between the image of flames near a power station and the actual risk on the ground, which centered on containment, access and the protection of surrounding communities.

The fire also cut into a conservation area that carries its own weight in national planning. Dunwich Heath is a National Trust site and protected coastal heathland, and one report put the area burned at roughly the size of 140 football pitches. That scale matters in Suffolk, where wildfire risk now intersects with emergency planning around critical infrastructure as well as land management, tourism and ecology.

The county’s nuclear preparedness framework already covers fixed civil nuclear sites, civil radiation material in transit and defence nuclear material in transit, under a radiation emergency plan implemented in February 2024. Suffolk Resilience Forum later updated evacuation planning in October 2024 to include potential Sizewell C incidents, after government approval for the project in July 2025. The Dunwich Heath blaze tested a region where climate-driven fire risk, protected landscape management and nuclear-adjacent emergency planning now sit in the same conversation.