Thick black smoke filled the air over St Philip's after fire broke out in a large container at a council tip.

A member of staff was emptying old electrical goods into the container when they burst into flames just after 12.30pm yesterday.

Steve Sulley, 50, who works at the household waste recycling centre in George Jones Road, said: "I was driving a large front loader and was just emptying the bins, moving old electrical waste like radios and stereos from one bin to another.

"I emptied the bucket into the container and bang, up it went."

As the flames reached the top of the container, Mr Sulley, from Kingswood, called the fire brigade and tackled the blaze himself using the site's own hose.

He said: "There was no rhyme nor reason to it.

"There must have been something hot in there. It could have been anything, as we often get things like deep fat fryers.

"But it's the first time I have seen anything like that in four years."

Staff at the tip remove from the waste stream any electrical goods that can be treated, including computer monitors and TVs.

But things like radios, kettles and hairdryers are scrapped.

Mike Winstone, the site supervisor, said the electrical item that caused the fire would have been dropped off at the tip at some point yesterday.

Mr Winstone said: "There is often a lot of plastic in the container and we will have to find out if anything was dumped in there that shouldn't have gone in."

No one was injured in the incident.

The police have been informed, and it is not clear how the fire started.