Tuesday
So I got past the barricades and visited Batlow in a press convoy. My house is still standing, more, it is almost unscathed. The service station two doors down had gas tanks that exploded. It utterly levelled the house in between mine and the service station. All that remains is rubble and dust.
He only bought it a few weeks before Christmas. His house is destroyed, mine is undamaged. How am I supposed to feel?
My good friends Douglas and Berlinde (correct spelling) have an organic farm. Their house survived, but many years of hard work were wiped out in one firestorm. All their trees are destroyed, including the hundreds of lemon trees that were just coming to a commercial crop for the first time.
They will persist and will build it again; it is in their character and their belief.
All because idiot politicians, fire chiefs and the gullible media listened to the ramblings of childish Greenies with their utopian Bambi ideals.
What a mess. What a wake up call.