A LEADING Firefighter today warned of the dangers of turning gas cylinders into 'bombs' by throwing them away on skips.

George Mullaney gave the safety advice after tackling a skip fire in Meadow Bank, Accrington, at 11pm yesterday.

Firefighters found a gas cylinder amongst the rubbish and were lucky to have been called to the scene before it had got hot enough to explode.

He said: "If they explode they can cause a lot of damage. They are like a bomb.

"Luckily in this incident we got there while the cylinder was just getting warm, but it could have been very dangerous.

"People can return the cylinders to building merchants or the council can take them away for disposal.

"But they should not be put on skips as we have a lot of incidents where skips are set alight."