Soap suds and shammy leathers have helped towards making life better for an accident victim.

Crews from Dovercourt fire station filled their buckets with hot water and got out the sponges to raise money for charity by sprucing up cars.

More than £200 was raised and the money split, with half going towards an electric wheelchair for Aarron Todd, brother of retained fireman Craig.

The 28-year-old was in a coma for four months after sustaining serious head injuries in a road accident more than a year ago.

As his family kept a vigil at his bedside Aarron began to get stronger and he is now at Tendring Meadows Nursing Home in Tendring village.

He needs continuing therapy and treatment to help him make progress and learn to use his legs again.

Craig said: "We are having a bit of difficulty raising the money for Aarron to keep having the treatment which he needs.

"For him to make any progress he has got to keep up the occupational therapy and behavioural therapy and we have arranged to meet with Ivan Henderson to see if he can help us with this."

Until now Aarron has used a manual wheelchair to get about, but money from the fire crews will be added to other funds to buy him an electric chair.

Other money from the car wash will go towards the firefighters' benevolent fund.

Helping Aaron - car-wash crazy Dovercourt firemen

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.