Arsonists leave trail of fire across Doncaster in spate of deliberate blazes last night

And then a fourth incident was reported in the early hours of this morning.

The first of the incidents came when a deliberate rubbish fire was started on Almholme Lane, Arksey, at 8:35pm.

Firefighters from Adwick Fire Station attended, leaving at 9:30pm.

Soon after they had returned to their base, the same fire station was called out to a deliberate fire involving trees at 9:45pm on Victoria Road, Bentley. The crew came away at 10:10pm.

Then five minutes later, firefighters from Edlington fire station attended a deliberate rubbish fire at 10:15pm on The Crescent, Conisbrough, Doncaster The crew left the scene at 10:40pm.

The Edlington crew was back out again later, at 1.30am for another arson incident, when they were sent to deal with a deliberate rubbish fire on Princes Crescent. They were on the scene for 20 minutes.

Firefighters across South Yorkshire last month asked the public to help them crack down on deliberate fires across the county, by reporting incident details to a dedicated new fire line.

In response to the 3,900 deliberate fire incidents they were called to in last year, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue has joined up with an arm of the national charity, Crimestoppers.

FireStoppers, which works in the same way as Crimestoppers, allows the public to anonymously report any information they have on deliberate fire-setting.

This can be done by calling a dedicated phone number, 0800 169 5558, or by using an online form – www.firestoppersreport.co.uk. Once reported, the details will be anonymised and used as part of fire and police investigations.

This latest fire service campaign comes after firefighters were called out to 3945 deliberate fires across South Yorkshire last year.

Figures show that Doncaster was the worst hit area, with 1116, followed by Rotherham with 1053, Barnsley with 989 and Sheffield with 787.

“We’ve made great strides in terms of reducing house fires over the last 10 years, but nearly 4000 deliberate fires in one year is 4000 too many,” said Group Manager Matt Gillatt, deputy head of the joint police and fire community safety team."

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