GUTSY Black Country firefighters have spoken of the heartbreaking devastation they witnessed in earthquake-hit Nepal following an international mission to help save lives.

Dean Harris and Dean Yates, who have worked at stations in Dudley and Brierley Hill, were among nine West Midlands firefighters deployed as part of a UK International Search and Rescue mission after the 7.8 quake hit 80k northwest of Nepal's capital Kathmandu on April 25.

The pair, both firefighters for more than 20 years, have been on numerous deployments with the team including to Japan in 2011 after the country was hit by both an earthquake and tsunami.

Mr Harris, aged 48, who has worked at Dudley Fire Station, said working with the British Gurkhas the team managed to reach more remote mountainside locations where no search and rescue teams had been to but what they were faced with was almost total devastation.

He said: "A lot of these villages suffered 90 to 100 per cent destruction to all the buildings - and they’re cut off because they’re so remote."

Mr Harris, currently station commander at Bickenhill, said the team had just ten days to search for survivors, recover the bodies of lost loved ones, attempt to make buildings safe and provide shelter and medical relief for wounded communities.

He added: "We didn't find anybody alive in the rubble on this occasion, it was total collapse; so we quite quickly focussed on the ongoing needs of the community.”

He said many survivors had suffered "some fairly traumatic injuries".

The father-of-two from Stourbridge continued: "Many suffered crush injuries, breaks and lacerations. One man in his 80s or 90s had walked for seven days with an horrific head injury trying to get to a medical centre. His skull had been fractured and was deeply infected and he’d walked in 40 degree heat, over terrain most people can’t imagine."

Watch commander Yates, who has worked at Brierley Hill Fire Station, added: "We saw children with quite severe injuries still carrying on, still with a smile on their face."

The 44-year-old father-of-two, currently based at Solihull, was among team-mates who helped to make safe a hospital that had been virtually abandoned after the quake left a 15-tonne concrete tower overhanging the entrance.

He said: "It was all very precarious and very dangerous. We secured it with ropes and winches and tied it to the building so it couldn’t slip. All the time the work was being carried out we were having aftershocks. At the time the hospital was only able to work with 15 to 30 patients - the worst cases. That went up to 800, but it was only a temporary fix."

Mr Yates, who also lives in Stourbridge, said team members were surviving on as little as two to four hours sleep a day and he praised the efforts of UKISAR members back home who worked from the incident command room, run by West Midlands Fire Service in Birmingham, to co-ordinate the entire UK search and rescue mission in Nepal.

He said: "The chaps that are left behind have a lot of hard work to do at HQ. They're the unsung heroes, often putting in 12-hour shifts in addition to their own working shifts."

The team, deployed by the Department for International Development, returned last Wednesday (May 6) but despite being back in the comfort of their own homes the brave firefighters say they remain worried about how Nepal will cope as the weeks pass - especially after being hit by a further quake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, on Tuesday.

Mr Harris said: "The potential for an even greater humanitarian disaster is looming - they’re three weeks away from monsoon season and the vast majority of people in the rural areas have been displaced; medical facilities are pretty much under tarpaulin, and many don't even have access to fresh water. It’s going to take a concerted global effort to help people survive.

"It’s unlike Japan as it’s impoverished; Nepal is the fourth poorest country on earth."

Anyone wishing to make a donation towards relief efforts can do so online at www.dec.org.uk