ANYONE watching Tavistock Fire Brigade?s entry in Tavistock Carnival recently could have been forgiven for thinking the rescue service had gone super-size.

In fact, the firefighters were showing off their latest recruit ? a high output tender carrying almost a mile of hose and with the capacity to pump eight times as much water as a standard fire engine.

The ?hoselayer? will reduce the amount of relay pumps needed at a large fire and help to speed up response times by serving more engines without draining the town?s main water supply.

If necessary the machine can reverse its water flow and act as a high volume pump, clearing flood water at the rate of eight regular fire tenders.

The machine also carries CCTV and is designed to work alongside the newly inaugurated Incident Response Unit in case of a terrorist attack.