Rubbish arson attack at Wirral tip

May 13 2009 Birkenhead News

A 200FT plume of smoke stretched across Wirral after a landfill site fire.

Arsonists set fire to 15 rolls of bitumen-backed carpet on the site used to collect methane gas given off by decomposing rubbish.

Firefighters used foam to extinguish the flames because temperatures were too high for water.

The alarm was raised at the Biffa-owned tip on Dock Road South, Bromborough, at around 4.30pm on Sunday.

It took four crews two and a half hours to tackle 50ft flames. Fire watch manager Haydon Lipscombe said: “It was deliberately set on fire. The actual smoke plume went right across to Deeside – right across the Wirral peninsula. It was a couple of hundred feet high. We treated it with water to see if it would go out, but the water wouldn’t touch it, it carried on burning. So we starved it of oxygen with foam.”

The crews asked Biffa technicians to cover a further 50 of the carpet rolls with soil to protect them from further arson attacks.