Brigade chiefs have urged parents in Aberdeen to remind their children about the dangers playing with fire and going inside derelict buildings.
The plea was made after crews were called a trio of blazes – all believed to have been started deliberately – in a nine-hour period between Thursday night and Friday morning across the city.
The fire service was called to an incident at the derelict Victoria Road School in Torry around 2am yesterday, just nine hours after a blaze at another disused property in Cove, near Loirston Loch at 5.15pm.
Crews were then called back to the same location in Cove just hours later, at 8.15pm, to deal with another blaze.
A police spokeswoman said yesterday: “The Victoria Road incident is being treated as willful fireraising. The incidents at Loirston and Victoria Road are not thought to be linked.”
Fire service station manager Gordon Riddell, part of the prevention and protection team in Aberdeen, said: “We have attended a number of incidents recently whereby fires have been started deliberately in derelict properties and we would urge parents to warn their children about the very real dangers which exist inside these unsafe premises.
“They are not only extremely dangerous for those who enter them, but also for the fire crews who are called to respond to fires within them.”