Quick-thinking firefighters averted a major blaze at a Bradford school following a suspected arson attack yesterday evening.

Four metal bins containing discarded rubbish were found well ablaze and pressed up against a door of a bin storage area at the rear of Atlas Primary School, in Lincoln Road, Manningham.

When emergency crews were summoned to the scene just after 4pm the flames had spread from the heavy-duty containers to the premises – an area of the main building next to the school’s reception – and threatened to spread to the entire structure before a team of 15 firefighters intervened.

Three crews, from Bradford and Fairweather Green fire stations, acted promptly to drag the burning and dangerously hot containers away from the blazing door in good time.

It gave space for colleagues to extinguish the remaining flames, while another team entered the school from a different entrance with a hose reel to tackle any evidence of fire which may have spread inside the structure.

Fortunately the damage was confined to the bin area, but a number of classrooms, the school kitchen and reception were badly damaged by heavy smoke.

Classrooms further away from the source of the fire were less severely affected.

Powerful ventilation fans were set up inside the school to cast out lingering clouds of smoke, before crews finally left the scene secure at around 7pm.

The school is closed today, except to staff who will determine whether or not it will reopen as normal tomorrow.

Ian Gobbi, crew manager at Fairweather Green fire station, said: “When we turned up we thought the fire had spread under the school and that we were going to have a large building fire requiring 15 pumps and 75 firefighters.

“But the crews did an excellent job and got onto it very quickly.

“They were trade waste bins, four of them all blazing away at a door.

“They dragged them away and prevented the fire from spreading into the rest of the school. “A lot of the work in the end was extricating the smoke with positive pressure ventilation fans. We were up there for three hours.”

It is understood that the incident is being treated as a suspected arson attack.

Mr Gobbi would not confirm the suspicions but he did say: “It’s not every day that we get called to four bins on fire like this.”

No-one was at the school when firefighters arrived at the scene.