#KnysnaFires: Uncontainable fury of nature

The fury of the flames that engulfed huge swathes of the normally peaceful Cape coastal town of Knysna was almost unprecedented in this country’s urban history and, for many, fleeing the fury of the raging fires was the only escape.

An uncontainable inferno of the intensity that swept through the sedentary seaside community knows no boundaries, affecting rich and poor alike, paying no mind to race or religion, scourging the famous as well as the largely anonymous.

This echoes with chilling intensity in Lord Byron’s epic poem, Darkness. “The palaces of crowned kings – the huts, the habitations of all things which dwell, were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d, and men were gather’d round their blazing homes.”

The fate of Knysna and its citizens is a natural disaster on a scale hard to take in, etched as it is in the wider hardships the heavens have visited on this country’s southernmost province, gripped in the talons of a devastating drought.

Yet, we should never let the broader spectrum of the catastrophe intrude on the heartfelt sympathy for reality of real individuals due to return to the ruins of their lives when only the embers remain.