By Car torched by ‘arsonists’ in early hours incident
A car is thought to have been deliberately set alight by arsonists after it was discovered in a Doncaster village in the early hours of Sunday.
The vehicle was found alight on East Bank in Stainforth.
A crew from South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue in Thorne attended the scene at around 02:49am. They left the scene at 03:24am.
The incident was one of five dealt with by the team between Friday night and Sunday morning.
Two were in Doncaster, and four involved vehicles.
A black Fiat Punto was also set alight on Warmsworth Road in Balby, Doncaster at 11:48pm on Friday night.
Firefighters were on the scene until 00:22am. This incident is also thought to have been deliberate.
A statement by South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue said:
“A car had been set alight on East Bank in Stainforth, Doncaster at 02:49am Sunday morning.
“One crew from Thorne attended and left the scene at 03:24am.
“They deemed the fire to have started deliberately.”
The incident comes just weeks after the launch of a new dedicated arson ‘hot-line’, known as FireStoppers.
The service was launched in response to the 3900 deliberate fire incidents South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue dealt with last year – Doncaster was the worst hit area with 1116 cases.
Matt Gillatt, Deputy Head of the Joint Police and Fire Community Safety Team, said:
“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.
“We want to show people that we are taking this issue seriously and we also felt we needed to provide people a safe, anonymous route to report details of arson attacks to us.
“Other fire services across the country have successfully reduced deliberate fire setting by up to 20 percent through this service, and we’re hoping it will have a positive impact here.
“Our ask of the public is simple – if you know anything about deliberate fire-setting in your area then please report it via the FireStoppers line and help us crack down on these fires.”
Suspected cases of arson can be reported via the dedicated phone number, 0800 169 5558, or online.
All details will be dealt with anonymously and will form part of fire and police investigations.
