DELABOLE’S parish councillors found out first hand what the village’s fire station gets up to on a regular basis when they visited the station for a weekly drill last month.

The firestation put on a couple of scenarios as temporary station manager Clyde Ferguson explains.

He told the Post: “Road safety is an important issue at the moment in Cornwall so it was only right that we put a drill on for them to give an insight into what we get up to, and to lend our support for the new 20mph rules in the village.

“We set up a scenario where there’s two vehicles and what we class as a RTC (road traffic collision) with one live casualty and the other being a dummy.

“We used our standard processes to extricate them.

“In a normal RTC scenario we’re guided by the paramedics as to the state of the casualties and that’s always our priority.

“The live casualty was complaining of neck pain and abdominal pain, so what we class as a B-Post rip, to gain space. We then extricated the casualty on a board.

“For the second casualty, the dummy one, prior to the incident had a medical episode so that was a full-scale roof removal.

“They were extricated out of the top using a board.

“From our side it’s to show the differences in time to do those two different scenarios.

“That’s what they did and we also showed them the latest recruitment video that Cornwall Fire and Rescue have produced and also explained the challenges of recruiting new personnel and how we’re actively looking to recruit as soon as possible. They know now what challenges we face at a road traffic accident.”

Clyde expects these evenings to happen more and more.

He said: “It was the first event we’ve held with the council since Delabole and St Teath have recently split up, and I hope we can work with other parish and town councils in our patch to show them we do on a yearly basis.”

Cornwall Councillor Dominic Fairman was part of the visiting group and told the Post: “I was very pleased to be invited to Delabole along with the Parish Council to their drill night and see for myself the team showing their skills during a mock traffic accident scenario where “casualties” had to be cut safely from the wreckage.

“As a County Council we are currently responding to a Government consultation on the future governance and funding of Fire and Rescue Services and I am strongly in favour of moving Cornwall Fire and Rescue away from the core Council where it has to compete with other services for funding and towards an independent service with an elected commissioner which has separate and sustainable funding like the Police.

“I was pleased to learn that Delabole currently has a full complement of firefighters which reflects the long and proud tradition in the village and also the goodwill of local businesses for being flexible with employees to allow them to retain this important role.

“However, this is not the case across many of the community fire stations across Cornwall and more secure funding is needed to be able to offer more flexible On-Call contracts and keep this important service fully staffed. As we have all seen this year, the increase in long hot summers as our climate changes is going to put increasing pressure on the service.”