A MAJOR environmental clean-up has been launched after 10,000 litres of oil spilled from a school and got into a tributary of the River Calder.

Environment Agency protection officers were alerted and firefighters in Burnley also had to be called to deal with two fires in Sweet Clough Brook believed to have been started by children.

A valve inside an oil tank which provides the heating system for St Hilda's RC School, in Coal Clough Lane, cracked causing the oil to leak from the tank, through the school, out into the playground, down the surface water drains and into Sweet Cough Brook' which runs through the Griffin estate, and piped on to the Lowerhouse estate before joining the River Calder.

Specialist waste cleaners are in the area trying to pump out the oil out from the brook.

A spokeswoman for the Environment Agency said: "The gas oil has affected a 1km stretch of Sweet Clough but we have no dead fish seen in the water at the moment.

"Luckily it was reported to us by people who spotted oil in the river and contacted the agency on our hotline. We are very grateful to those people."

St Hilda's headteacher, Miss Bernadette Bleasdale, said: "The leak was spotted by the site supervisor and when I arrived at 8.20am yesterday we called out a container from the oil company in Manchester to empty the tank which was filled last week with 10,000 litres of heating oil."

Part of the school was cordoned off but the school remained open for the 750 girls because the building was warm from the night before as the heating system had been on for a parents' evening.

The school was open as normal today. The heating company has provided a temporary tank.

Sub-officer John Davies, of Burnley Fire Station, said the crew was called to Sweet Brook at the back of Helston Close where the pink gas oil was running down the brook and children had set it alight 12.30pm.

He said Environment Agency staff had put in absorbent pillars to try to soak up the leak but there was too much oil coming through.

At 6.05pm the fire crews were called out to a further fire in the brook at Middlesex Avenue.

The Environment Agency spokeswoman said investigations were continuing into the leak and they would be overseeing the clean-up operation which could take a few days and assessing the environmental impact of the spillage.