MORE than 60 per cent of all fires in Renfrew were started in and around just one street, The Gazette revealed in 2009.

Shocking figures revealed that, from October to December 2008, a total of 49 fires were started deliberately in Knockhill Road and the streets leading off it.

In the whole of Renfrew, there were 79 fires in the same period.

Furious residents got together to beat the vandals responsible once and for all.

For the previous three years, beleaguered members of the community had been threatened with violence and intimidation if they spoke out.

Residents claimed they were living under the shadow of school-age yobs who set bins alight and then got high by sniffing the acrid fumes.

The fed-up Moorpark residents gathered with top cops and fire chiefs at Renfrew Town Hall to thrash out a plan of attack.

Angry taxi driver Ross Kean, from Knockhill Road, said at the time: “I have had my bins set on fire so many times I have had to build a fence round them and padlock the bins to it. It costs me £20 a time to get the bins replaced.”

A 23-year-old resident added: “I have had eight bins torched and now I don’t have one. I just have to leave the rubbish in bags out in the street.

“When I pulled up the boys who were doing it, they smashed my close window.”