Everything to Live For: The Inspirational Story of Turia Pitt (6 page)

Turia crouched in a depression among the rocks, pulling her long-sleeved top over her legs in a last-ditch bid at some protection. The heat was intense; the air was thick with smoke and the flying debris of burning embers.

Kate hunched in a small crevice in the rocks, poured the contents of her water bottle over her and waited for the fire to pass – except it didn’t pass.

Shaun looked at his father and said, ‘I don’t have a good feeling about this, let’s go.’

Martin’s first thought was to stay put and he hesitated.

‘Okay, Dad, I’m going.’ Shaun took off. Almost instantly Martin turned to run after him but by then he could hardly see his son through the billowing smoke.

Hal was already heading uphill; as he turned around to tell Kate to keep going, he heard the roar of the fire as it leapt over the ledge so, knowing he didn’t have the strength to go any further up the slope, he veered to the right and ran parallel along the cliff.

The radiant heat was burning and blistering Kate’s skin and the fire hadn’t even reached her yet. Kate felt it was like putting her hand on the flame of a gas fire but not being able to pull it away. Her shoulder was on fire and instinctively she stood up to pat it out; at that moment the flames engulfed her. She screamed in a moment of pure terror.
This is what it is like to die in a fire
, she thought. Kate began to run, and fell over on the rocky terrain; seconds later she heard Turia scream and knew from the pitch of her scream that she had been caught in the fire too.

As the fire enveloped her, Turia was having the same thoughts as Kate:
Is this how I die?

Hal heard the panicked screams and thought,
That’s the sound of someone burning to death
.
One of the girls is gone.

Shaun turned around when he heard Kate screaming. He peered through the flames and could see nothing but the combusting spinifex and Turia trying to follow him.

The intensity of the heat had become impossible for Turia to bear and she’d stood up and tried scrambling up the hill after Shaun. She fell, hitting her head on a rock. He heard her screaming with panic and pain and turned around again to see her disappearing into the fire.

Michael, who had seen Turia fall, knew he was next.
I’m not ready to die
, he thought and made the decision to run back through the line of fire towards the already burnt area, tripping and gashing his leg on a sharp rock as he went.

Meanwhile Martin – scrambling up the steep gradient after Shaun – slipped on a rock and sprained his ankle. Partially shielding himself behind a tree, he tried to get his ankle to function; he didn’t dare call out to Shaun – he wanted him to keep running and save himself. As the fire raced towards him, Martin heard the heart-rending, agonising screams of the burning girls below. When the fire was almost upon him he pulled his nylon compression socks down to prevent the nylon melting into the skin of his lower legs and, like Michael, ran back headlong through the flames, holding his hands over his eyes.

In the depth of the fire, one of Martin’s running shoes melted off his foot, causing him to trip and fall again, spraining his other ankle, hitting his head on a rock, splitting his ear open and burning his right hand severely on a burning branch.

Shaun ran for his life. He too tripped, heard a loud crack and thought he had broken his leg but he kept running and jumped off a 4-metre-high ledge, tumbling down the cliffside. He then sat back under the ledge. When he looked up he saw the flames reaching over the ledge but it was too high up for them to set fire to the grass below him.

As Shaun sat exhausted, shaking, heart pounding, he checked the GPS watch he always wore on his wrist when running and saw his heart rate had reached 216 beats per minute and he had run 100 metres in 15 seconds. He registered that his leg was sore but not broken. It was 1.20 pm.

Looking down he saw a steep cliff across an open valley with some green tree areas and realised he was in was another part of the Tier Range.

Sitting there, he felt lost and alone. He honestly believed no one could have survived the intensity of the fire; while he had a strong impulse to check if his father had survived he was scared – if he went back to the small rocky ledge, he was positive he’d find five charred bodies. He’d invited his father to go in this marathon and was wondering how he was going to tell his mother he’d been responsible for his father’s death.

Eventually he decided to make his way cautiously down into the valley, where he might be more easily seen by rescuers. The fire had started ramping up through the valley in the distance; he descended slowly and found a clump of trees where he sat down and wrapped his running vest around his face to avoid being asphyxiated by the thick smoke.

T
HE HELLFIRE WAS OVER IN MINUTES
.

When Michael emerged he found he was between Kate and Turia. He first saw Kate, who was standing up with her back to him. Where her clothes had been burnt off, he could see skin and flesh literally melting off her. He didn’t know Kate; she turned and looked at him, wide-eyed and in pain, and he knew she was in a bad way.

Turia was on the ground; she had stopped screaming but Michael couldn’t look at her after seeing Kate. He could not speak; words would just not come out of his mouth and he collapsed in shock. His legs, arms, fingers and ears were burnt and he had a large open gash on his lower leg.

Almost simultaneously, Martin arrived back, having picked himself up from the smouldering ground and headed to where he had heard the screams for help. The first person he saw through the smoke was Turia, lying on the ground, silent; he saw she was still alive. Martin introduced himself and asked her name. To his relief she answered ‘Turia’.

Martin’s plastic water bottle had fallen from its separate pack holder and burnt out, even though it had still had water in it, and as he struggled to remove his backpack to get at more water, Martin was suddenly hit by waves of nausea; overcome, he dropped to the ground next to Turia. His legs were burnt to his thighs and he had burns to his right hand; his ear was also bleeding from where it had been split open during his fall.

Once the nausea passed, Martin tried to move Turia a little to make her more comfortable and gave her two Panadol tablets and some water from a container in his backpack. He thought about putting some of his water on her burns but judged that as the area of her burns was so extensive, it was better to save any water to keep her hydrated.

As the smoke cleared, Martin saw Michael, lying down some distance away, and Kate, who he saw was also seriously burnt.

A few minutes later, Hal appeared through the smoke and heat. He had run into an already burnt-out and blackened area, miraculously escaping the fire but suffering from smoke inhalation. Hal had climbed back around the hill, adrenalin still pumping, to see if anyone was alive; he was expecting to find bodies. To his amazement they were alive but the scene was confronting; he immediately saw how severe his friend Kate’s burns were. Michael, lying a few metres away, at first glance didn’t seem too bad. Martin – though clearly not in good shape himself – was administering to Turia.

Hal went to Kate and gave her Neurofen from his pack and tried to make her more comfortable. He asked if anyone had something soft for her to sit on as her buttocks were badly burnt. Martin gave them a sleeping bag cover from his backpack – it was thin but at least it was something.

Next, Hal checked Michael; he now seemed to be in a lot of pain. Michael’s Lycra compression leggings had burnt into his skin below the knees so the extent of his burns was not fully visible. But he had no broken bones. Miraculously, no one had broken bones. Hal gave him Neurofen; Michael impressed upon him that he was able to manage his own injuries.

‘Look after the girls, mate,’ he said. It was obvious that they were in need of urgent medical help.

Martin sat with Turia, helpless in the face of the seriousness of her burns with his anxiety growing about the whereabouts of Shaun.

‘How badly burnt am I?’ Turia asked.

Heartbroken at this polite question in the face of her horrific burns, Martin couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth. ‘You’re okay and you’ll heal well,’ he told her, in the most comforting manner he could muster. Her legs were throbbing and she asked Martin if she could raise them and place them over his stretched-out legs. He helped her do this.

At this stage it became apparent to Hal that as the least injured of the five, he was the only one in a position to take on the burden of decision-making. They had survived; they didn’t know where Shaun was; the fire had moved on. His priority quickly moved to the problem of raising the alarm. Did anyone know they were there, let alone that two race competitors were critically injured? They were beyond mobile reception and no one had a satellite phone. Assuming the organisers would be alerted when they didn’t turn up at checkpoint three, there was still no way of knowing how long this might be. They didn’t know how far the fire had gone or if the course markers were still there or even if anyone else had been affected by the fire.

It seemed clear to Hal that he was the only one capable of walking out, so he said it would be best that he went for help and Martin, who at least seemed to be capable of moving around, stayed and applied whatever first aid he could with the supplies they had.

‘No, man; I will come with you,’ Martin insisted. ‘Two is safer than one in this situation.’

Hal was impressed by the stamina of this older man, who was obviously injured and in pain, and that he was prepared to walk maybe several kilometres for help.

But Martin was also becoming increasingly concerned about his missing son; finding Shaun was uppermost in his mind. If Shaun had not come back to look for Martin – which Martin was felt sure he would do if he were able to – then he had to be either injured or dead.

‘Can you help me find Shaun first?’ Martin asked Hal.

Knowing that Martin should save his strength, Hal told him to stay put and said he would go and have a look. Hal spent about ten minutes walking around the cliffs, blowing his whistle and shouting but heard no answering whistle or shout. He returned to give Martin the news.

‘This is not necessarily bad news,’ Hal said, trying to reassure him. ‘He may have gone too far to be heard.’

By then nearly forty-five minutes had passed since their horrific encounter with the fire.

The terrible image of the fire engulfing Turia and Kate had been witnessed by other competitors. The three young men from Newcrest Mining – who Turia had chatted with on the bus and had run with for the early part of the race – emerged from the gorge shortly after the fateful six had congregated and were discussing their options. They were still too far away to see the group through the bush but they saw the fire; it was a confronting sight. Two of the mining men had fought outback bush fires before but nevertheless they found the sight of the wide sweep of this fire quite frightening.

The men, Brad Bull, Wade Dixon and Trent Breen, retreated about 100 metres up the dry creek bed, knowing they couldn’t go back into the gorge or follow the creek bed out. Trent climbed up the side of the gorge and found a way to escape; Wade and Brad followed him up the escarpment. From their vantage point on this ridge they suddenly saw some of the others and watched, horrified, as the fire sweep up the hill, engulfing the girls, and heard their screams. They also saw Shaun running down the other side into the next gorge.

From where they were, it was quicker to get to Shaun first so they carefully made their way down through the steep, rugged terrain to where he was sitting holding his shirt over his face.

Relieved and gratified to see them, Shaun told them how worried he was about the others; his father was among them. It was clear that Shaun was in shock. The Newcrest men did not tell him exactly what they had witnessed. But they knew they all had to compose themselves for what might lie ahead so they sat quietly for a few minutes. Then they zigzagged back up the burnt-out gorge, each man bracing himself for the possibility of a gruesome find.

On the way Shaun’s shoes melted on the smouldering ground but he ignored the heat on his soles and kept climbing, blowing his whistle, hoping. Suddenly, he heard the faint sound of Hal’s whistle somewhere; ‘Thank God, at least one person is alive,’ he thought.

So, shortly after Hal arrived back and told Martin he hadn’t found his son, Shaun appeared, followed by the Newcrest men minutes later. It was an emotional father-and-son reunion; both having thought the other dead, they hugged and cried tears of relief.

Next Martin told Shaun how bad Turia and Kate were. Accompanied by the three Newcrest men, they picked their way over the hot, blackened earth and stones to where Turia and Michael lay and Kate sat crouched over.

Shaun and the Newcrest men quickly assessed the situation and went into the emergency action they’d all been trained in as mine workers. They spent the first few minutes checking everyone. They pooled their limited supplies to administer dressings, Panadol and water to Kate and Turia. Shaun also gave Turia some ibuprofen tablets. Unequipped for serious burns, they nevertheless did what they could by soaking their crepe bandages with water from their supplies to try to keep the burnt skin moist.

This was the Australian outback; by this stage it was after 2 pm and the temperature was 37 degrees and climbing. Hydration was a serious issue; even pooled, water was limited. There were now nine people on the ridge and no one knew how long it would be before they were rescued.

It was obvious that the heat from the sun was exacerbating Turia’s and Kate’s burns so the Newcrest men, helped by Shaun and Hal, set about shading the girls by stringing up their space blankets and silk bag liners between sparse trees. It was decided not to move Turia but to build a shelter over her where she lay.

Trent, who had assumed a leadership role, compiled a manifest of the names and race numbers of everyone present. It was imperative that word get out about the seriousness of Turia’s and Kate’s injuries and about half an hour later, Wade headed down to the valley with the manifest; the plan was for him to walk back towards checkpoint two, blowing his whistle to see if there were any other competitors still on the course.