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Delyth Jewell, Plaid Cymru MS for Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni
Delyth Jewell, who represents Plaid Cymru, is one of six Senedd Members serving the Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni constituency.
The past few weeks have brought immense challenges to our communities. This was the summer when wildfires brought the reality of the climate crisis into many of our homes, with stifling smoke that choked our area.
From Senghenydd to Ebbw Vale, our mountainsides were set alight, and I remain immensely grateful to the brave firefighters who tackled the blazes. It is maddening beyond belief to think that some of the fires that ravaged our valleys might have been started deliberately.
An emergency summit will be held imminently, now that the major incident has been stood down, to consider what urgent lessons need to be learned for the future.
The Welsh Government acted quickly to support the request made by emergency services for military aid – and I was grateful when that support was given. The fires were devastating for many farmers, and I cannot begin to imagine how terrifying it would have been for people living right beside the blazes.
This week, my colleagues and I will be visiting one of the farmers whose land was badly damaged at the top of our valleys. It was one of too many areas where our hillsides came to look like scenes from disaster films.
The need for Wales to become more resilient in the face of fires and flooding is urgent. This will be one of the starkest challenges of our times – and we will all have our part to play in adapting how we live our lives.
But this is something that governments, too, have to prioritise, and that’s something our Plaid government has pledged to do.
The layout of our land in valleys communities leaves us more exposed than most to the shocks of extreme weather: yet again, our area is at the coalface of a crisis. It’s why I found the quips of some political figures that people should just “enjoy the hot weather”, and who downplayed the seriousness of the smoke and fire, so utterly jarring and, well, insulting to be honest. Our communities deserve so much better than that.
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Senedd