When Isaac Steen gets home from a long day at work, he doesn’t spend his evening worrying about a looming deadline or a curt email. He fears the cancerous toxins that might have seeped into his body over the course of his shift – and whether he’s bringing them home to endanger his family.
Steen is a 28-year-old firefighter from Essex. Days before we spoke, he’d been on duty during July’s three-day heatwave that saw temperatures in England reach a record-breaking 40.3°C and wildfires break out nationwide.
During the heatwave, Steen’s Basildon fire station – one of 51 in Essex – received 25 emergency callouts a day, up from what he estimates would typically be around 10 in a 24-hour period. The team was stretched to the limit – sometimes not even able to get one fire under control before being redeployed to another.
