PEMBROKE Dock Fire Station and the Royal Tank Regiment held a joint exercise to help in the event of an emergency.

Gary Smith, the Crew manager at the fire station said that the event came about so that the station could assess risks not normally experienced by most fire services.

"One of the things that this station has that no other stations in our area has is the firing range," he said.

"We go there when they have grass fires and things from the ammunition and the firing, but we don't have any familiarisation training on the actual vehicles.

"I'm ex-military myself so I know that there are risks involved with the vehicles that go through Castlemartin."

Mr Smith said it was not just tanks that it was important to assess, armoured vehicles also need to be looked at so that the service knows how to make it safe in the event of an incident.

He said: "If we went to a standard road traffic collision we'd be looking at ways to make the vehicle safe - what risks the vehicle could pose to us, what we would have to look out for.

"It was that scenario but on military vehicles, with things like the ammunition, ways that we could make it safe."

The exercise comes after two soldiers were killed in an explosion at Castlemartin in June last year.

Mr Smith said that previous incidents highlighted the potential of what they could go to as a service.

"What the tank regiment showed us was their ways, their methods, of dealing with extracting casualties from the vehicle,” he said.

"Through the various hazards, the ammunition, the electrics and ways that we could immediately make the vehicle safe if we needed to.”

Pembroke Dock Fire Station is hoping that the training will become an annual event, with regular familiarisation visits for all the types of vehicles.