Albury station officer Dean Campbell — the fires could have been deadly.
ALBURY firefighters believe one person, or one group of people, is responsible for lighting at least six potentially deadly fires in Lavington in the past fortnight.
The most recent fires were lit in McDonald Road early yesterday morning.
The corner of a woman’s roof was burnt after a five-metre-high bush was set on fire in her front yard.
Another tree just metres down the road was also set on fire.
It comes after fires burnt the back door of a Douglas Road flat and the front gate of a house in McDonald Road last week, just a block away from the latest blazes.
“It’s hard to say if they’re the same person but we’re certainly getting a lot of similar fires at the same sort of time each night,” Albury station officer Dean Campbell said.
“It looks like it was (the same culprit). A tree doesn’t usually just catch alight at one o’clock in the morning.
“I’d say there have been about half a dozen (fires) in the past two weeks, all the shifts have had one or two each.
“It’s just a bit of a pattern.”
Firefighters were called to yesterday’s fires about 1am and it took them just 12 minutes to put out the tree burning in the front yard of McDonald Road resident Debbie O’Shea’s flat.
Ms O’Shea was awake at the time but only learnt her house was in danger of catching on fire because she could see the flames of the second fire out her window.
“I didn’t even realise the tree was on fire,” Ms O’Shea said.
“I saw the other fire and came outside to make sure it wasn’t going to spread and saw that my tree was on fire as well.
“It was scary ... but all I could think was that if it didn’t go any further by the time the fire brigade got here I’d be fine.
“It could have been worse, I don’t know what people are thinking when they are setting fires and having no regard for the consequences.”
Mr Campbell said the consequences of lighting fires could be deadly.
“They’re little nuisance fires at about two o’clock in the morning but they’ve got the potential to get into a house,” he said.
“Because of all the flammable material in the roof, it could have been roaring through this block of flats pretty quickly.”