Firefighters furious after youths set three bin and rubbish fires in two hours in Wigan

Fire crews from Hindley station were called to Woodcock Drive in Ince to extinguish the flames at the trio of incidents between 10pm and midnight on Monday.

Other news: Senior teacher at borough school learns about life with Crohn's disease to launch new app at request of brave teenagerCrews were initially called to a pile of rubbish being burned and said that as they were leaving the six teenagers, who were wearing black with hoods up, told them they would immediately find more things to burn to draw them back.

That sadly proved accurate as the firefighters then had to deal with an industrial bin dragged across a field and set alight.

They then returned again after the bin was piled full of what looked like the contents of several wheelie bins and burned.

The drain on emergency service resources was so bad Greater Manchester Police (GMP) eventually had to be called to disperse the youths.

Firefighters have now slammed the irresponsibility of the teenagers and are urgently calling on residents to ensure their bins cannot be accessed easily by yobs.

Watch manager Mark Anderson said: "It's hard to know what to say when dealing with such wanton destruction of other people's property and such a deliberate misuse of the emergency services.

"The big message is bin safety. We went round the estate following the police's attendance and filled wheelie bins with water or moved them to areas where they were more secure.

"We need to state educating the public better on putting bins in a place of safety. They need to put them out as late as possible before collection and take them in as soon as possible afterwards.

"People tend to move bins for a few weeks and then complacency sets in and it becomes a lower priority."

The incidents on Monday night in Ince are not the first where fire crews have had their time wasted by groups of youths setting fires.

Mr Anderson said crews had also recently been regularly tied up attending a spate of very similar blazes around Leyland Park in Hindley.