AMHERST — Five fires in recent days in Amherst and surrounding towns, blamed on careless disposal of smoking materials, is leading the Amherst Fire Department to issue a warning about proper ways to put out lit tobacco and marijuana products.

A release from Fire Chief Lindsay Stromgren issued Friday afternoon, hours after a cigarette caught a trash can on fire in an Amherst building, warned about how smoking materials continue to be the number one cause of fatal fires in Massachusetts.

The fires have included one late last month in which an Amherst apartment remains uninhabitable after smoking materials caused a wooden porch to catch on fire, destruction of a home in Leverett in March by smoking materials discarded outside and a bedroom fire in a neighboring town caused by a cigarette dropped on a carpet.

The Friday incident and another earlier saw trash cans catch on fire, one in a home and the other in a college dormitory.

On Mother’s Day last year, an apartment building in downtown Amherst was heavily damaged, and is still uninhabitable, due to a cigarette being discarded on a wooden porch.

The department is referring people to the state fire marshal’s office online tips page:

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/smoking-fire-safety