Fire ripped through piles of rubbish at a skip hire company in Wolverhampton.

It took firefighters more than five hours to extinguish the blaze at Jones Of Bilston, in Monmore Road Trading Estate, Monmore Road, Bilston.

The fire affected between 70 and 80 tons of general household waste which had been emptied out of the rental skips.

Crews from Wolverhampton, Fallings Park, Bilston, Tettenhall, Tipton and Dudley were called to the scene at 4pm yesterday and did not leave until after 9.30pm.

Owner Ted Alexander today said: “We were all at work when we noticed the smoke and called the fire brigade.

“It took about fire hours to put it out and we’ve absolutely no idea how it started.

“It was just a pile of refuse which was waiting to be sorted before being sent to the tip. There was no damage to anything, it hardly affected the rubbish.”

Watch Commander Danny Hinds, from Bilston Fire Station, said: “We used six appliances over five hours to bring the fire under control and returned later in the evening to check that all hot spots had gone.

“The fire was quite bad when it started and there was a lot of smoke.

“We are unsure of the exact cause of the fire but we believe it may have been spontaneous combustion which is quite a common occurrence in rubbish which is piled high.”

One lane of the neighbouring Bilston Road was closed for more than three hours while crews tackled the blaze.

A mechanical digger from a neighbouring business was used to pull sections of waste from the fire and these loads were extinguished one at a time.

Once the fire was put out the remaining rubbish was damped down to make it safe.

The Environment Agency was called to the incident by firefighters and officers due to carry out an assessment of the site today. Smoke from refuse fires can be a hazard.