TWO Hatherleigh firefighters are celebrating notching up 70 years service as on-call firefighters in the town between them.

Watch manager Kevin Drew and firefighter Terry Reynolds are both Hatherleigh born and bred – and both joined the station as retained firefighters at the age of 18 back in 1983.

Now 35 years on, they are both still fighting fires – and rescuing cats stuck up trees – at the station. Terry, 53, is also crew manager at neighbouring Okehampton Fire Station, while Kevin, 52, now also works for Devon and Somerset Fire Station inspecting hydrants across the two counties. He’s still on-call in Hatherleigh in the evenings and at weekends.

‘My father was a firefighter before me and two of my uncles and it was a natural progression really for me, something I grew up with and something I wanted to be when I was old enough,’ said Kevin.

‘It has changed a lot over the years, some things for the better. We have got a lot more technology than when we first started.

‘It took me about 18 years as a firefighter to rescue my first cat up a tree, and I’ve now had five. So I’ve had cats up trees, the fire at the Clarence Hotel in Exeter and everything in between.

He said the best thing about being an on-call firefighter was ‘the not knowing’.

‘You never know what you are going to, you never know when you get called out what it will be about. That’s the thing that keeps it interesting.’

Terry also came from a firefighting family, with his father being a firefighter before him. He combines being an on-call firefighter with his day job as a production manager in Okehampton.

‘I still enjoy it,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I’m getting a little tired now sometimes after going out during the night. I take a bit longer to recover but I still do it – and I’ll still do it for as long as I’m fit enough.’