Bayswater fire: Cleanaway rubbish truck catches fire on Hudson Street

A Cleanaway rubbish truck has gone up in flames in Perth’s eastern suburbs.

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services were called to the incident on Hudson Street in Bayswater about 8.20am on Monday.

Firefighters are on the scene fighting the blaze.

WA Police and St John WA are not in attendance.

It comes as Perth councils plead with local households to stop throwing lithium batteries in regular bins after reporting three fires a week in rubbish trucks and waste facilities.

A survey of waste contractors found WA rubbish trucks and facilities were seeing three fires a week — with national figures as high as 30 per day, on average.

“Councils will come to us with their trucks, so the main issue we have is with trucks tipping, if there’s a damaged battery in there, or it gets damaged in the process, then we can get a spontaneous fire, which they have to deal with on-site,” Waste Facility Resource Recovery Group chief executive Brendan Doherty said.

“We probably get something a couple of times a month — it’s mostly small fires and, obviously, you don’t want a small fire to become a big fire.”