The Game of Life Related Text How we cheated flames of death Gary Hughes.

How we cheated flames of death

G ARY HUG HES

THE AUSTRALI AN
FEBRUARY 0 9, 20 09 1 2:0 0 AM

THEY warn you it comes fast. But the word "fast" doesn't come anywhere
near describing it.
It comes at you like a runaway train. One minute you are preparing. The next you
are fighting for your home. Then you are fighting for your life.
But it is not minutes that come between. It's more like seconds. The firestorm
moves faster than you can think, let alone react.
For 25 years, we had lived on our hilltop in St Andrews, in the hills northeast of
Melbourne.
You prepare like they tell you every summer.
You clear. You slash. You prime your fire pump. For 25 years, fires were
something that you watched in the distance.
Until Saturday.
We had been watching the massive plume of smoke from the fire near Kilmore
all afternoon; secure in the knowledge it was too far away to pose a danger.
Then suddenly there is smoke and flames across the valley, about a kilometre to
the northwest, being driven towards you by the wind. Not too bad, you think.
I rush around the side of the house to start the petrol-powered fire pump to begin
spraying the house, just in case.
When I get there, I suddenly see flames rushing towards the house from the west.
The tongues of flame are in our front paddock, racing up the hill towards us
across grass stubble I thought safe because it had been slashed.
In the seconds it takes me to register the flames, they are into a small stand of
trees 50m from the house. Heat and embers drive at me like an open blast
furnace. I run to shelter inside, like they tell you, until the fire front passes.
Inside are my wife, a 13-year-old girl we care for, and a menagerie of animals
"rescued" over the year by our veterinary-student daughter.
They call it "ember attack". Those words don't do it justice.

Gary Hughes Senior

Writer for The
Australian newspaper.
Further details of his
near-death experience
in the Black Saturday
bushfires is available
here:
http://www.theaustrali
an.com.au/news/garyhughes-black-saturdayrecovery/storye6frg6n61111119053220
Black Saturday
Bushfires: Information
and Photographs:
http://www.blacksatur
daybushfires.com.au/

Simile the fire

moving like a
runaway train.
Starting slowly,
manageably,
increasingly
becoming faster, and
faster, lessmanageable, too
frantic and before you
know it, out of
control.
Repetition fighting
for: to emphasis the
impending danger and
to create an
atmosphere of
tension.
Narration: starts in 2nd
person, with glimpses
of 1st person
narration. The 2nd
person narration adds
to the tense
atmosphere and
creates empathy by
placing the reader
right into the fire. The
first person narration
Worksheet No: 1

The Game of Life Related Text How we cheated flames of death Gary Hughes.

It is a fiery hailstorm from hell driving relentlessly at you. The wind and driving
embers explore, like claws of a predator, every tiny gap in the house. Embers are
blowing through the cracks around the closed doors and windows.
We frantically wipe at them with wet towels. We are fighting for all we own. We
still have hope.
The house begins to fill with smoke. The smoke alarms start to scream. The
smoke gets thicker.
I go outside to see if the fire front has passed. One of our two cars under a carport
is burning. I rush inside to get keys for the second and reverse it out into an open
area in front of the house to save it.
That simple act will save our lives. I rush back around the side of the house,
where plastic plant pots are in flames. I turn on a garden hose. Nothing comes
out.

outlines the particular

details of Gary and
his family.
2nd person narration
places the responder
into the drivers seat
of this story,
enhancing the gaming
element.
The short sentences
here give a sense of
urgency and highlight
the matter-of-fact
nature in which Gary
is preparing his home.

I look back along its length and see where the flames have melted it. I try to pick
up one of the carefully positioned plastic buckets of water I've left around the
house. Its metal handle pulls away from the melted sides.

The element of choice

Setting up for a win
realising your
losing changing
the plan

I rush back inside the house. The smoke is much thicker. I see flames behind the
louvres of a door into a storage room, off the kitchen. I open the door and there is
a fire burning fiercely.

Personification of the
flames and the smoke
alarm.

I realise the house is gone. We are now fighting for our lives.

The melting bucket is

a metaphor for the
families fight against
the fire everything
is melting around
them.

We retreat to the last room in the house, at the end of the building furthest from
where the firestorm hit. We slam the door, shutting the room off from the rest of
the house. The room is quickly filling with smoke. It's black, toxic smoke,
different from the superheated smoke outside.
We start coughing and gasping for air. Life is rapidly beginning to narrow to a
grim, but inevitable choice. Die from the toxic smoke inside. Die from the
firestorm outside.

Highly descriptive
language, creating
suspense and Gary
and the family fight
the fire, step by step.

The room we are in has french doors opening on to the front veranda. Somewhere
Emotive language,
out of the chaos of thoughts surfaces recent media bushfire training I had done
coupled with inclusive
with the CFA. When there's nothing else, a car might save you.
phrases we
I run the 30 or 40 steps to the car through the blast furnace. I wrench open the
door to start the engine and turn on the airconditioning, as the CFA tells you,
before going back for the others.
The key isn't in the ignition. Where in hell did I put it? I rush back to the house.
By now the black, toxic smoke is so thick I can barely see the others. Everyone is

frantically wipe
places the responder
right in the middle of
the fire with Gary. THE
audience is being
placed in a vulnerable
position.
Worksheet No: 2

The Game of Life Related Text How we cheated flames of death Gary Hughes.

coughing. Gasping. Choking. My wife is calling for one of our two small dogs,
the gentle, loyal Gizmo, who has fled in terror.
I grope in my wife's handbag for her set of car keys. The smoke is so thick I can't
see far enough to look into the bag. I find them by touch, thanks to a plastic
spider key chain our daughter gave her as a joke. Our lives are saved by a plastic
spider. I tell my wife time has run out. We have to get to the car. The choices
have narrowed to just one option, just one slim chance to live.
Clutching the second of our two small dogs, we run to the car. I feel the radiant
heat burning the back of my hand. The CFA training comes back again. Radiant
heat kills.
The three of us are inside the car. I turn the key. It starts. We turn on the
airconditioning and I reverse a little further away from the burning building. The
flames are wrapped around the full fuel tank of the other car and I worry about it
exploding.

Example of anaphors
the repetition of we at
the start of each
sentence. We
frantically wipe we
are fighting we still
have hope.
High Modality /
Imperative heightening the sense
of urgency.
The concluding
paragraphs considers
how once defines
themselves when they
have nothing that life
needs to start again.

We watch our home - our lives, everything we own - blazing fiercely just metres
away. The heat builds. We try to drive down our driveway, but fallen branches
block the way. I reverse back towards the house, but my wife warns me about
sheets of red-hot roofing metal blowing towards us.
I drive back down, pushing the car through the branches. Further down the 400m
drive, the flames have passed. But at the bottom, trees are burning.
We sit in the open, motor running and airconditioner turned on full. Behind us
our home is aflame. We calmly watch from our hilltop, trapped in the sanctuary
of our car, as first the house of one neighbour, then another, then another goes up
in flames. One takes an agonisingly slow time to go, as the flames take a tenuous
grip at one end and work their way slowly along the roof. Another at the bottom
of our hill, more than a 100 years old and made of imported North American
timber, explodes quickly in a plume of dark smoke.
All the while the car is being buffeted and battered by gale-force winds and
bombarded by a hail of blackened material. It sounds like rocks hitting the car.
The house of our nearest neighbour, David, who owns a vineyard, has so far
escaped. But a portable office attached to one wall is billowing smoke.
I leave the safety of the car and cross the fence. Where is the CFA, he frantically
asks. With the CFA's help, perhaps he can save his house. What's their number,
he asks me. I tell him we had already rung 000, before our own house burnt. Too
many fires. Too few tankers. I leave him to his torment. I walk back towards our
own house in a forlorn hope that by some miracle our missing dog may have
survived in some unburned corner of the building.
Worksheet No: 3

The Game of Life Related Text How we cheated flames of death Gary Hughes.

Our home, everything we were, is a burning, twisted, blackened jumble. Our

missing dog, Gizmo, Bobby our grumpy cockatoo, Zena the rescued galah that
spoke Greek and imitated my whistle to call the dogs, our free-flying budgie
nicknamed Lucky because he escaped a previous bushfire, are all gone. Killed in
the inferno that almost claimed us as well.
I return to the car and spot the flashing lights of a CFA tanker through the
blackened trees across the road. We drive down the freeway, I pull clear more
fallen branches and we reach the main road. I walk across the road to the tanker
and tell them if they are quick they might help David save his house. I still don't
know if they did. We stop at a police checkpoint down the hill. They ask us
where we've come from and what's happening up the road. I tell them there's no
longer anything up the road.
We stop at the local CFA station in St Andrews. Two figures sit hunched in
chairs, covered by wet towels for their serious burns. More neighbours. We hear
that an old friend, two properties from us, is missing. A nurse wraps wet towels
around superficial burns on my wife's leg and my hand.
We drive to my brother's house, which fate had spared, on the other side of St
Andrews.
The thought occurs to me, where do you start when you've lost everything, even a
way to identify yourself. Then I realise, of course, it doesn't matter. We escaped
with our lives. Just. So many others didn't.
Gary Hughes is a senior writer for The Australian

Worksheet No: 4