FIRE crews worked well into the night on Monday evening to battle a blaze at Whitchurch.

Two fire appliances from Tavistock were mobilised following a call at 7.12pm from the occupant of a farm reporting they had a poll house outbuilding on fire.

Shortly after arriving, crews requested two further appliances for water and manpower after confirming the building was well alight. When they discovered that acetylene cylinders were involved, this was immediately increased to a further two crews and a water bowser.

The crews were mobilised from Yelverton, Princetown and Crownhill with the bowser coming from Plympton and crewed by Ivybridge personnel and a command support unit from Totnes.

At 8pm the crews were using two compressed air foam jets and breathing apparatus to combat the blaze externally due to the acetylene cylinders inside.

At 9.25pm crews had established a 200 metre cordon and the fire had been sectorised to fight it effectively.

By 10.45pm the crews were making good progress turning over and damping down.

The fire was extinguished fully at 12.55am. The blaze, which started accidentally, completely destroyed the pool house and was extinguished using 12 breathing apparatus, three ground monitors, two main jets, compressed air foam, two thermal imaging cameras and a light portable pump.

Crews remained in attendance for a further hour. Due to a few smouldering hotspots which crews had been unable to access due to the structure being unsafe to enter, a crew attended at 7am on Tuesday morning to carry out an external reinspection.