Yesterday I got in the car with Tjarls and her 75kg great dane "puppy" and headed to Knysna to assess the damage at both her house and my ex boyfriend's dad's place as they live in England and had just been told it "burnt down".
As we got closer the sense of trepidation grew, knowing how huge the fire had been, how much devastation it had caused and how many people were still fighting to protect what little they have left. We prepared ourselves for the worst before we saw it. We drove through town, staring open mouthed at houses, on the main road, completely burnt to the ground. You could see how the wind had picked up the fire and dropped it at random intervals, leaving some buildings miraculously untouched amongst the smouldering of their surroundings. The beautiful Knysna Peaks were still burning and the whole town was covered by a cloud of trapped smoke. The smell was overpowering at times, especially once we got into Tjarla's house which was - although smokey - in amazingly good shape considering how her neighbours had fared. The balcony and outside parking cover are burnt and there were a few cracked windows but other than that it was fine.
After the assessors left we made our way up the peaks - towards the still burning fire - to Tim's house. It took a while and a few phone calls from London to get the security to allow us access to the estate. Eventually they told us to be careful and let us go by.
I held my breath as we wound our way through the black, burnt land, past houses that once were homes and were now simply crumbling walls surrounded by chaos. Finally we got to Tim's house, right at the edge of the estate, overlooking the ocean. I remembered the house well. It's where I fell in love, harder and faster than I ever had before or since, that was the start of something very special in my life.
We thought that house would be the beginning of the rest of our lives together, it was our own version of the Notebook but we didn't work out and the house, well there is no house.
There was nothing left, no evidence of anything that once was. Not a chair, a picture, a table, a plate, nothing.
I walked through the rubble in shock, remembering everything; the beautiful deck where watched the sunset, the kitchen where we played cards and drank wine, the pool, the bath, everything...and it was all just gone.
The office was the only thing that could still be described as a room and by some miracle the one remaining piece of furniture in the house was a wooden bookshelf full of paper files. I'm hoping that at least may be of some use to him. Everything else is destroyed.
The fire was still burning not far away, there's no signal at the edge of the estate and it was getting dark, we had struggled to find our way to the house in the light so were a little anxious to get back before it was pitch black.
So after taking some pictures and a video to send to London and saying silent thank you's and good bye's to what was once such a special place we got back in the car to an impatiently waiting and painfully bored great dane to begin a 3 hour drive to our home for the night.
After what literally felt like forever and still reeling from what we had just seen we arrived at our cottage. It was hard to see much in the dark but it was cute, clean and cosy! We showered and took JJ for a walk before collapsing in bed.
We had driven for about 9 hours to surround ourselves with utter devastation, it was an emotionally draining experience to say the least.
And the people effected in this instance are lucky; they are insured, they have the resources to rebuild their homes and their lives. Most people effected, do not. To think that arson could be the cause of all this loss and tragedy should be unthinkable. What kind of rogue madness and hatred could cause a person to let loose that kind of unstoppable destruction. It is heartbreaking.
