Everything to Live For: The Inspirational Story of Turia Pitt (7 page)

Trent switched his focus to looking after Turia, who lay uncomplaining, with the hot wind blowing over her. Shaun attended to Martin’s injuries, dressing his father’s legs with some crepe bandages. Fortunately Martin’s rolled-down compression leggings and woollen socks had prevented his melted shoes from burning his feet and ankles but when Shaun poured saline water over his right hand, his father didn’t flinch. Shaun thought he must have sustained third-degree burns, which would have killed off the nerve endings and probably meant Martin would lose his hand. Shaun gave him some juice but they had run out of pain-killers.

Everyone heard a very small voice out of the blue: ‘Excuse me, please.’

It was Turia. ‘Can someone please get the ants off me?’ Turia had fallen on an ants’ nest and big ants were crawling all over her.

It was decided to move her to the shaded area next to Kate. When Shaun and Trent first took hold of Turia’s arms to assist her to walk, they were horrified to discover her skin peeled off to the touch and they quickly took her by her underarms instead.

Belatedly, Hal went into shock and felt incapable of even speaking. Once he realised the Newcrest guys knew what they were doing he switched off and commenced the wait for help, sitting between Kate and Turia, giving them sips of water and hoping they remained conscious.

Kate’s back and buttocks were too badly burnt to allow her to lie down. She would sit for as long as she could then when the pain got too much, she would stand up. Hal was silently concerned about the girls’ airways swelling up and although Kate did not appear burnt on her face, he was sure she stopped breathing a few times.

Shaun helped Michael wet his visible burn areas and then sat with Turia, giving her occasional sips of water. She spoke a little and several times asked him if her face was okay. It wasn’t, but Shaun felt it was the last thing he could tell her.

Knowing that the Beyond Action helicopter was out there somewhere, the men placed space blankets across the rock ledge, hoping the reflective shining surface would attract attention if it flew near. Time ticked by and Martin raised the subject of their rescue again. Even though Wade had been sent to raise the alarm, Martin was still keen on walking out to get help.

‘Dad, you’re not going anywhere. Sit right there. We have to wait,’ Shaun told him firmly, even prepared to forcibly restrain him if necessary.

So they waited. And waited.

A
S REVEALED IN THE
2012 W
ESTERN
A
USTRALIA
G
OVERNMENT
Inquiry into the Kimberley Ultramarathon, many people knew about the fires in the region that day.
¹
So why did it take so long for alarm bells to be heard?

The first person to raise the alarm about the fire on the day of the race was John Storey. John had, in fact, been concerned about fires in the region in the days before the race. On 26 August, John had flown RacingthePlanet’s course director, Carlos Garcia Prieto, over the region in his gyrocopter and had seen a fire in the Dunham Valley, which was part of the course. The following day he sent an email to the then president of the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley (SWEK), Fred Mills, regarding the potential of the fire to impact on competitors:

‘. . . The fire that has been burning in that valley has been allowed to come unchecked right across from the main road completely annihilating the country that they will pass through. Its present position and the rate of travel will put it on the track that they will be running on the Durham Valley on about Friday when they will be coming through. Even now the fire could be put out with two passes of Lance’s plane. It will make great headlines in the paper when we see “International Race Cancelled due to disinterest by Shire”. The charred landscape will make a good backdrop for the film’s tourist promotion too.’
²

John was not a volunteer for the 2011 race and was assisting in the preparation of the course as a friend. The committee did not establish whether RacingthePlanet sought his opinion about the potential impact of the fires or whether he discussed with them his view that the race should be cancelled if the fires were not suppressed.
³
RacingthePlanet did not change its fire risk assessment at that point.

As subsequent emails presented to the inquiry revealed, Mary Gadams and the company’s event manager, Riitta Hanninen, asked the Kununurra Visitor’s Centre (KVC) on 30 August who they should contact about the fires. Nadia Donnelly, the centre’s marketing manager, advised them it was Tony Stevenson at the local office of the Fire and Emergency Services Authority (FESA). Nadia left a message for Tony on 31 August notifying him of the event and asking what should be done about the fires; she also spoke to Luke Bentley at the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) about the fires in the region. Luke said he would be happy to look at the fires but would need a map of the course. Later the same day, Tony contacted Nadia and suggested that the local hospital, chemist and St John’s Ambulance be notified of the race. Nadia noted that Tony did not have a map of the course. Nadia emailed Mary on 1 September letting her know she had spoken to Tony of FESA the previous evening and he was now aware that Mary would be in touch with him; Nadia gave Mary Luke and Tony’s telephone numbers and email addresses.
⁴

It transpired that RacingthePlanet did contact the DEC but not FESA. They were later to explain they thought Tony Stevenson was obliged to contact them.

After starting the race, John and his wife had coffee at the Emma Gorge Resort and then set off for home in their gyrocopter, deciding to first fly over the route to wave to competitors. John believed FESA had been notified of the fires and had a map of the course. But as he flew over the east ridge of the Tier Range to the valley, which the course passed through, John was horrified to see that a large part of the country to the southeast was on fire and flames were racing up the northeast end of the range.
⁵

Straight away he turned back towards checkpoint two, trying unsuccessfully to contact RacingthePlanet as he went. He then used his VHF radio to call Nathan Summers, the Heliwork WA pilot of the helicopter the Beyond Action team had chartered for aerial sequences of the race. He told Nathan to land at checkpoint two and tell officials that a fire ‘coming over the range about 2 kilometres away will be on you in two hours’. He repeated the message twice.
⁶
John Storey was unable to land himself, as a gyrocopter is not equipped to land in rough terrain. At this stage John believed he had done all he could to warn the organisers; his fuel was running low and he headed for home.

But the bush-covered terrain at checkpoint two had made it impossible for Nathan to land near enough to pass the message on personally, so he landed as close as he could, which was on the other side of the Gibb River Road. He jumped out of the helicopter and shouted the message across to a member of the media team on the ground; this message was then conveyed to RacingthePlanet’s event manager, Riitta Hanninen, at the checkpoint at about 10.30 am.
⁷
Nathan then resumed his job of flying the Beyond Action camera crew around the region, assuming the message would be delivered and appropriate action would be taken to ensure the safety of the runners.

John Storey’s two-hour calculation would put the fire at checkpoint two by about 12.30 pm. The cut-off time for competitors to reach checkpoint two was 2 pm, which meant there was potential for competitors to be caught in it.

When the message regarding the fire was relayed to RacingthePlanet at checkpoint two, the course director, Carlos Garcia Prieto, was still at checkpoint one; it was here he noticed a large plume of smoke in the direction of the Gibb River Road section of the course. Video footage presented to the inquiry by Beyond Action showed two other smaller plumes, one either side of the main one.

Garcia Prieto then left for checkpoint two with the aim of monitoring the fire, which he believed was near the Gibb River Road. As he drove to checkpoint two he kept an eye on the Gibb River Road smoke and determined the fire was no danger to competitors, who were passing through without incident.
⁸

By the time he arrived at checkpoint two at about 11 am and was given John Storey’s message by the checkpoint captain, Dr Brandee Waite, who was also the event’s medical director, it appears that the detail of the direction of the fire – that it was coming over the ridge – was missing from the message.
⁹

Garcia Prieto’s interpretation was that the message he’d been given by Dr Waite – ‘There is a fire coming towards us and it may be at checkpoint two in two hours’ – referred to the Gibb River Road fire and not a new fire. Neither he nor Hanninen made any attempt to determine the exact location, direction and severity of the fire as relayed in the message from Nathan or to hold competitors at checkpoint two until they had done so.
¹⁰

Turia, Kate, Hal, the Van der Merwes and Michael all came through checkpoint two after 11.30 and, had they been held there, it’s safe to say they would not have been trapped by the fire a little over an hour and a half later.

At about 11.40 am, Kate’s friend Andrew Baker, Nathan Dyer, a reporter from the
Kimberley Echo
, and Hanninen left checkpoint two and drove along the Gibb River Road to a point in the course called The Barrels, about 20 kilometres from checkpoint three. From here they planned to monitor competitors emerging from the Tier Gorge. After they arrived at around 12.15 pm, competitors coming through told them that fire was getting close to the track; as Andrew listened to what the runners were saying he was worried; Kate and Hal were not yet among them and he could see the smoke in the direction of the Tier Gorge seemed to be getting thicker.

Hanninen told the inquiry she noticed flames and smoke but wasn’t sure how big the fire was; she said her main concern was that the fire would burn the course markers and competitors would get lost.
¹¹

Garcia Prieto, along with another volunteer, Scott Connell, and Mary Gadams’ husband, Alasdair Morrison, headed for checkpoint three to start putting up the glow sticks for runners traversing the course after dark. On the way Prieto saw a lot of smoke and flames in the vicinity of the course and, concerned that if the markers got burnt the competitors would get lost, immediately turned the vehicle around to head back to checkpoint two.
¹²

About 2 kilometres from checkpoint two he stopped when he saw a local volunteer, Lon Croot, who was ‘sweeping’ the course with another RacingthePlanet official. (Sweepers are race officials who walk with or behind the last competitor; when the sweepers reach a checkpoint, the checkpoint officials know that there are no more runners coming and they can close the checkpoint. They are also a safety backup – so that if someone is injured, at the very least they will be found by the sweepers.) It was Lon’s first time volunteering for an event like this. Lon, a thirty-two-year-old forestry worker, had been helping the RacingthePlanet team set up in the preceding few days and knew there were fires in the area. Everyone he was working with knew there were fires because they had to go back and re-mark the course in certain places after fires burnt out the pink markers.

Lon was extremely worried about the fires. Even though they were spot fires, he was conscious that if a hot wind got up, the fires could rage out of control very quickly and he had mentioned this to members of the RacingthePlanet staff. ‘Aren’t you worried about that?’ he had asked them.
¹³
They were all racing to get everything set up and appeared not to be concerned about the fires.
¹⁴

Garcia Prieto drove Lon back to checkpoint two and asked him to go into the area where the fire was to help the runners stick to the course; he gave Lon his GPS to help him find his way and some pink tape to re-mark the course if it had been burnt.
¹⁵

That was at around 1 pm.

After sending Lon into the gorge, Garcia Prieto, Scott and Morrison headed back to checkpoint three, arriving at just after 2 pm. By then only twelve competitors had come through – this left twenty-eight competitors somewhere in the no-man’s-land between checkpoints two and three.

Two other competitors, Brenda and Martyn Sawyer, had arrived at the top of the gorge just before 1.20 pm; straight away they saw thick smoke and fire ahead. They then heard a male voice shouting from the valley floor, ‘Don’t come down. Fire!’

This call was from fellow competitor Ellis Caffin, who – with his partner, Dr Heather Scott – had seen a huge wall of smoke, which they thought was about 2 kilometres in front of them as they came out of the narrow part of the gorge. They had dropped down into the valley and were following the pink markers. As they walked along the dry creek bed they could smell smoke, and even though they had also come across several small grass fires earlier in the day, they believed that as they had not been warned about any fire, it was nothing to worry about.
¹⁶
About five minutes after exiting the gorge, however, the smoke was thicker and the wind was in their faces.

Heather was getting nervous. Suddenly the fire was massive and they could hear its roar. Ellis, a defence force helicopter pilot, decided they should climb the valley wall to a narrow ridgeline with less grass. Each wet a piece of cloth to wrap around their faces and climbed up. Within two minutes the flames had climbed the ridge to where they had taken refuge. They were then faced with no other choice but to jump the fire line at a very narrow break into an already burnt section – a split-second decision which prevented them from being burnt. The heat was intense; Heather, a nuclear scientist, was the most scared for her life that she had ever been.

It was at that point that Ellis yelled up the valley to the competitors behind that there was a fire and they should go back. After Ellis saw the Sawyers turn around, he knew they would be able to warn any others.