Bude Fire Station recently commended two of its members as they reached the milestone of 25 years of service.

Both Matt Wonnacott and Gareth Clark work full-time jobs and have always been ready to go at a drop of a hat as retained firefighters.

Life as a retained firefighter can be extremely rewarding, exciting and varied; but it can also be challenging. It takes a huge amount of dedication to make sure both their fire trucks are available for crewing 24/7.

Barney Day from Bude Fire Station praised both Matt and Gareth for their work over the years.

He said: “As an on-call station, we all work full-time jobs and have to be available to drop everything when that pager goes. That includes both our professional working lives and our personal family lives. Twenty-five years of service is a fantastic milestone to reach for both Matt and Gareth; it’s the commitment and dedication from the entire station which not only guarantees our emergency response when someone needs the fire service, but also gives us the high level of success we achieve with community safety involvement and the fundraising events year after year.”