AS IF plunging into a smoke-filled flat looking for a casualty was not risky enough, a Tavistock firefighter was then faced with two gas canisters.

This was the most dangerous incident of Tavistock retained firefighter Simon Beard’s career.

He recalled the dramatic details after receiving his 20-year long service award from Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Service at Tavistock Fire Station.

Luckily, two brave men rescued the flat’s occupant during the fire on King Street on Christmas Day 2023.

For Simon, a building supplies merchant manager for Bradfords, and a colleague, the fire was an incident that could face them after their pagers summon them.

In this case the pager went off at midnight and Simon rushed off to the fire station, not knowing what awaited him and his fellow part-time firefighters.

He said: “One of the attractions of being an on-call retained firefighter is the variety. I’m on night shifts because I have a full-time day job and that can be testing on the patience of my family and my sleep patterns. I can be called any time between 6pm and 6am, which can happen one night after the other and then I turn into a bit of a zombie with lack of sleep.

“When that pager goes off, you could be in bed or watching the telly or in bed, and you never know what’s waiting for you. In this case it was midnight on Christmas Day, which isn’t the best time.

“We entered the flat with breathing apparatus because it was full of smoke from a fire and were looking for a person reported as being inside. It was only a small flat, so we soon gave the all-clear for a casualty. But, after our hear rate reduced after seeing there wasn’t a casualty - we were back on full alert when we saw two gas canisters, which are the worst things to have in a fire.

“The danger of them exploding was reduced when one was venting from its safety valve, but the other was still dangerous. Our air supply was low, so we left and colleagues took over. It was a challenging situation, but you get a huge sense of satisfaction from helping make the community safer and a personal buzz.”

Simon thanked his family, wife Viki and Kayleigh, 13 and Mason, seven, for their support when he is rushing off to a shout at inconvenient times: “They do put up with a lot when I have to disappear with little notice. But they are excited when the pager goes off. They also see behind the scenes on open days.”

He has previously served at Princetown Fire Station where monitoring the safety of the yearly swaling (or controlled burning of moorland vegetation to encourage new growth) was a regular duty.

Simon joined the fire service to ‘give back to the community’: “I’d recommend it for giving you a sense of doing good and for the camaraderie and the variety of work.”

Anyone interested in a fighter career can attend Tavistock Fire Station on Thursdays 7pm-9pm.