Emergency services were called this afternoon to tackle a camper van on fire on Corporation Street.

Police officers closed roads around the scene causing some localised traffic problems. Lancashire Police did say the vehicle on fire was a yellow Volkswagen camper van.

One eyewitness, Annabelle Lennon, a UCLan student retold the incident to Blog Preston: “A car was on fire on Corporation Street with a bus blocking the way.

“By this point [the arrival of the police] the fire had increased in size and there was a lot of smoke and crowds gathering. The fire service arrived a few minutes after.

“There was a significant time gap between the emergency services arriving. Luckily no one was trapped in the vehicle.”

Officers said there were small gas canisters inside the vehicle and could potentially explode. I went as closer to the cordon, and I could hear small explosions caused by the blaze.

A spokesperson for Lancashire Fire and Rescue said they could not give any details because fire fighters were still on the scene.

“The traffic built up in the city centre along Fishergate, the emergency services failed to direct traffic in efficient time causing a huge backlog of traffic to build up all along in the town centre. At the top of Fishergate, as it joins Corporation Street, there was no member of the emergency services to keep people back.

“All of the focus was on the bottom on Corporation Street, instead of using their resources to cover the whole incident to reassure the general public,” Annabelle added.

Close to the incident, a John Fishwick and Sons single-decker bus was parked on an angle with the doors still open.

A company spokesperson said the driver and the passengers escaped unharmed and they were in no immediate danger.