The fire brigade is ditching the old red, orange, yellow system of alerts to avoid confusion with weather warnings, the organisation announced on Thursday.

The colour coding used to warn about the risk of forest and heath fires is too likely to be confused with weather bureau KNMI’s weather warnings, giving people the impression that it would be dangerous to venture into nature, the fire brigade says.

The new system consist of two phases, with phase 1 reminding people to be careful with open fire in a natural environment and phase two alerting people to a potential danger of fire and urging them to call in fires on 112.

Phase 2 also includes increased aerial surveillance of the area concerned and a ban on burning waste. Some 70% of all forest and heath fires are caused by carelessness, the fire brigade says.