Tavistock Fire Station has a new fire engine which will allow the crew to respond more efficiently to incidents.

Station manager Glenn Arundel said the appliance was a replacement for the current vehicle, which had come to the end of its useful life.

He said: ‘It is a replacement medium rescue pump so it is the biggest one that we have got in Tavistock. It is a very good pump, brand new, it has got all the modern equipment on it.

‘Our current one has got to the end of its useful life. We have had it six or seven years, it used to be someone else’s before we had it.

‘The service are bringing in 38 of these new vehicles across the whole area [Devon and Somerset] and we are one of the earlier ones to get one.

‘It is a really nice pump. It is a like-for-like replacement but a more modern version with some improvements. It has got cutting equipment that we can remove from the vehicle, so if we had to cut something in someone’s house we can take it off and carry it in. We can also carry a fan, so if the house is full of smoke we can use that to pump it out. Previously we had to use a petrol fan to pump it out, so it is a lot safer.’