A RECENT fire which destroyed two homes at Oake has led to a local council drawing up a map of its fire hydrants.

Nynehead Parish Council noted in their recent August meetings that a piece of work would be undertaken to locate all fire hydrants after, they say, damage to the the two houses affected “was exacerbated by the fact that fire crew did not have access to the location of fire hydrants.”

It was agreed to locate all the fire hydrants in Nynehead and ensure that the covers are visible and free from debris with residents encouraged to know the locations of fire hydrants near to their property.

Vice chairman and leader of the Oake Parish Council Emergency Plan team, Cllr Chris Hillier said: “We are conducting our own survey in the parishes and will include it in our Emergency Planning and print out separately for each of our Community Emergency Response Team volunteers once completed.”

Asked about the delay in discovering the fire hydrants a spokesperson for the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service said: “The location of hydrants is mapped on the mobile data terminals on all our fire appliances so that firefighters can locate them quickly.

“Due to the amount of water we required to deal with this incident, we needed to establish two hydrants. Once the second hydrant was deployed there were adequate water supplies to deal with the incident.”

The maps for East Nynehead have documented every fire hydrant within the parish with it’s coordinates, a description of its location and the positioning of the bright yellow fire hydrant marker. The What3Words location marker has also been included.

Two families in the village lost their homes when the blaze broke out on Oake Close on Friday July 17 shortly after 9.15 pm.

To date, donations to a Gofundme appeal to help both families has raised £3,888 of the £4.5K target.