FIREFIGHTERS used buildings marked for demolition as training grounds for several days of exercises.

Real fire was used to make the scenarios in the empty houses on White Horse Road in Cricklade as realistic as possible.

Fire service teams from all over Swindon and north Wiltshire began two weeks of training there on Monday.

Pete Price, watch ,anager for Cricklade Fire Station, said: “The likeliness of us landing these types of properties is exceptionally rare.

“We normally get given smoke houses in the service.

"The guys train in them so regularly that there’s a chance of them getting complacent and the beauty of having real properties as exercises is that it feels very real and it’s something we’re not used to, so it’s a wake-up call to the reality of the job.”

The first exercise was carried out on Monday night with teams from Cricklade, Wooton Bassett and Malmsbury.

A similar exercise was carried out on Wednesday night with Stratton’s fulltime and retained teams. The aim is to test their firefighting capabilities, breathing apparatus and teamwork.

The scenarios are based on real incidents which Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service regularly tackle.

Monday’s scenario involved squatters using the empty buildings for a cannabis farm, an issue which is becoming more and more common according to Mr Price.

The houses are owned by Green Square and will be knocked down in just over a week.

Posters were displayed in nearby shops and leaflets were delivered to alert local residents before training began in the cordoned-off area of the street.

The exercises will also test new practices which were implemented after two firefighters died tackling a blaze in Shirley Towers, Southampton, in 2015 due to becoming entangled in fallen cables.

Now, cables are required to be mounted in metal trunking rather than plastic.

Mr Price said: “A hundred people were watching on Monday, it was a great success.

"The buildings weren’t damaged at all, the systems we had in place worked really well and Wednesday’s went even better, it was very slick.”