Treatment of farmers after huge wildfire nothing short of insulting - Emma Ryan

To some degree for most people, life in this part of the North York Moors goes on as normal.

Businesses are open, walking routes are open, visitors are enjoying the beauty of the landscapes as they have for decades since the designation of national parks in the 1950s.

The thick smoke which sat heavily above Whitby and its surrounding countryside for weeks has cleared.

Yet, those memories live strong.

If they do for the wider public, for people at the heart of the fires - farmers and game-keepers fighting to save livelihoods, fire crews facing unexploded bombs - be assured they are acute.

If it wasn’t for them, how the wildfire which raged across Fylingdales Moor would have ended has the makings of a film script.

How they have been treated since is nothing short of insulting. Not by the public, I hasten to add. To us they are real-life heroes.

The outpouring of gratitude and affection for our local farmers was immense.

More than £70,000 raised in a crowdfunding appeal to cover costs of fuel and tractor and machinery repairs, and a turn out at annual tractor runs which reduced people to tears.

However, the government didn’t see fit to award any compensation for loss of livelihoods but had no issue with them tackling fires as members of the public with no training or PPE equipment.

Natural England and Defra had no issue in making it harder to prevent wildfires by removing a tool, proven for hundreds of years, and actually used as a method to stop the spread of the fire.

It took nature minister Mary Creagh nearly a year to visit the moors in North Yorkshire to see the aftermath. She has talked constantly about re-wetting being the way to stop fires.

Just days later she was removed as nature minister as part of a government reorganisation.

She has been replaced with Jenny Riddell-Carpenter who this week said “influencing human behaviour will be essential in preventing most wildfires from starting”.

Fair point, but how many years does it take to create a wetter landscape and how many years does it take to change human ideology in this day and age?

Wildfires aren’t going to wait. People living in at risk communities are as mentally scarred as the landscape.

They are still angry at the way they have been treated and they are fearful for the future.