The Fire Storm
by Caryl Moll One of the things I feared most, as a young child growing up on a farm, was the annual “fire season”. The images of the familiar orange glow on the horizon at night-time and the acrid smell of smoke in my nostrils still strikes a deep fear in me. Fire is unpredictable. Add wind to the equation and it becomes even more terrifying. Fire creates its own conditions and can whip itself up into an unimaginable storm. It’s scary. Unpredictable and very scary! I recall a particular incident one year on the farm. The fire had been raging for days across the vast countryside. It was edging closer and closer to our farm and our homestead. The whole community was on heightened alert to fight the various outbreaks. Some people’s homes had been burned to the ground and some had lost everything in the flames. We were all under threat and the carnage was visible for miles. Now it was approaching our home – from all directions. What were we to do? That particular evening, my father was out in the fields, with a group of workers trying to build fire breaks and fight the approaching flames. My mother and our household staff had packed up all our belongings and piled them up on the outside lawn. We’d soaked the surrounding area using a small hosepipe, but there was no guarantee that our efforts would save our belongings. The dogs and farm animals were rounded up too as we waited for any indication that they needed to be moved. They were uncertain and scary moments. The only thing we could do was to wait and pray for a miracle. As the night advanced, my father still hadn’t returned and my mother was becoming increasingly more worried. (We didn’t have cell phones in those days, so there was no communication). I remember her setting up a safe place for me to ‘sleep’, but sleep was the furthest thing from any of our minds. Fear gripped us all as we huddled and listened to the sounds of the wind changing direction and nearby trees going up in flames. We were totally at God’s mercy. Sometime during the night I fell asleep, but woke up to excited voices. I recognised my father’s voice immediately and ran from my sleeping area to go and investigate. The scene that greeted me was one I’ll never forget… My father stood in front of us all, visibly exhausted and bending over to catch his breath. His shoes were clogged in mud and he was covered in dark soot and dirt - from head to foot. He was hardly recognisable – only the white of his eyes and the glow of his teeth stood out. He still had hair on his head, but his eyelashes and eyebrows had been singed off totally. All the hair on his arms and legs was gone too. My father was a ‘hairy’ man and was now ‘hairless’. Thankfully, his…