Families share Birmingham bin strike hell and say 'major incident' started weeks ago'

Overflowing bin bags, an unbearable stench, fly-tipping and green spaces carpeted in litter

Finally, Birmingham City Council declared a state of emergency this afternoon in response to the bin strikes.

But with 17,000 tons of rubbish festering on the streets, the real crisis began weeks ago according to families living in inner-city Birmingham.

Since the bin crews called all out action on March 11, road junctions, cul-de-sacs, railings, in fact any communal space became dumping grounds for uncollected black bin bags.

Read More: Major incident emergency declared in Birmingham over bins

Visitors coming off the M6 Spaghetti Junction and onto Victoria Road in Aston, would be greeted by piles of sacks on grass verges.

Roads in congested, mainly terraced, wards became lined with overflowing bins and side rubbish, leaving mums on the school run, children and the elderly no option but to step into the roadway.

Tower block bin stores were rammed with waste bags rolled over into car parks. Residents couldn't open their windows for fresh air, step in their front gardens or even woke up to find rubbish pressed up against their windows.

There was no respite in our city's green parks with waste strewn everywhere, sinking in streams, rivers, ornamental lakes and in the beds of nesting swans.

Residents were worried and anxious about the spectre of rats as their street corners became open air-tips.

On March 21, the dumping of sacks on Abbotsford Road and Osborn Road dangerously spiralled out of control.

Someone had forged a narrow path so pedestrians could walk through the piles of putrid smelling bin bags which toppled over into the road.

Locals said cars were pulling up and throwing their rubbish onto to the growing heap instead of taking it to the tip.

One man said his asthma had worsened and a mother said: "It's disgusting and dangerous. I have a pushchair for my baby and I have to leave the pavement and go into the road.

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"It's causing rats I assume. People are taking advantage that there's piles there so they add to it."

Unedifying videos of rubbish, sometimes mocking the city, sometimes with pleas for action circulated on social media.

Local heroes organised community clean-ups, urging others to join them while a brave few tackled fly-tippers in the act.

But nothing could match the might of weekly organised council bin collections so the rubbish just built back up.

Politicians capitalised on the crisis with Tory Councillor Adam Kent and MP Bradley Thomas posing in front of a wall of garbage on Chelworth Road in Wythall, Birmingham.

The duo gleefully compared the haul of horrors to the spotless pavement opposite which is situated in Worcestershire and run by the Conservatives.

On Thursday, March 27, residents of Carlton Road in Bordesley Green came out of their homes to greet a bin crew on their round, calling them legends.

This particular road was book-ended with towers of fly-tipping which left pavements blocked, cars unable to turn and a health hazard.

Even as it was cleared up, locals feared the mountains would sprout up again.

Taz Akthar, a self-confessed clean freak, said: "We sweep outside our door every day and wash our own bins.

"The fly-tipping has been terrible. It's not nice by the surgery."

If they were lucky, residents would form queues as they took their rubbish to a visiting council mobile waste lorry. between the hours of 7.30am and 1pm on a weekday.

With scenes like this being played across the city day and night and the fear of a public health crisis, it is fair to say the emergency started weeks ago.