After a busy month Dartmouth Fire Service gave an update to the town ahead of the festive season, and a shout out for people to sign up as firefighters.

Station Commander Simon Rendle said they had more than 100 call outs this month – which meant the officer in charge of Green Watch had to treat everyone to doughnuts!

It wasn’t all fun though. Commander Rendle said: “This month has seen a few incidents including the sad events leading to the death of ‘Edward’ a lovely horse who had a bad fall from Ash Rescue Centre and ended up in the Fast Rabbit Farm. Using rescue equipment from Exmouth and a telehandler we were able to carry Edward to his last place of rest.”

Commander Rendle also commented on the recent fire in the centre of Dartmouth, late at night on December 10. He said one of the fire prevention team had recently fitted a smoke alarm in the property, which alerted the woman living there and enabled her to get out in time with her cat.

He added: “This could’ve been one of the worse fires the town has seen since the Fairfax Place incident some years ago. The crew was alerted to the sound of a smoke detector sounding in a flat near the Palladium Shopping Centre. They worked extremely hard in the first 30 minutes whilst back up from Kingsbridge and Totnes Fire Station arrived.”

Commander Rendle said a total of eight fire engines attended the incident and also the ‘ladder platform’.

“The fire was in the walls and voids and very difficult to access,” he said. “The crews were there all night and also the next day whilst fire investigation was carried out. We’d like to thank all the businesses who kept us going with hot drinks and food throughout the incident: Costa, Anzac St Bistro, Market Square Cafe, Royal Castle Hotel and Dartmouth Community Chest, who were amazing.”

Dartmouth Fire Service is looking for new crew members in the new year to make the station fully operational.

Commander Rendle said: “If you fancy a challenge and you’d like to be part of a great team of people then come and join us. We have two fire engines but because we are so short staffed we can only crew one of them. We have one firefighter going through his courses at the moment and one applicant going through the joining process. We really need a couple more and that could be you.

“If you want more info then go to www.dsfire.gov.uk/careers and click on ’becoming an on-call firefighter’. Or if you know any member of the team ask them what it’s like. We really need you.”