Ben Thoabuan, owner of a small rural tourism business, recalled: “We helped people get off the IC8 [road]; our house is near the road, the cars were destroyed by fire and our duty was to save what we could.”
As the flames violently spread on Saturday night, the couple took “between 15 and 20 people” into their home, where they waited for the fire to pass.
“My concern was to see if the house was okay”, he explained but as the property was safe, “we stayed for up to two or three hours in there. We were all terrified.”
Brushing off any suggestions of heroics, the Briton said: “We were the right people at the right time. The firemen are the heroes.”