Gary Hughes, The Aus, who was lucky to escape the fire with his life

WHITE ash a few centimetres deep spread surprisingly evenly over a concrete floor slab.

That's what your life - everything you and your family owns, everything that makes you what you are, every memory and every treasured possession - becomes after you turn a blast furnace loose on it.

Hughes' earlier piece on how he, his wife and ward escaped the fire.

We share the joy of being alive.

We also hear the names of others who didn't make it and those still missing. It is a long list.

More faces of those we've lost*.


(*if you just click on the edge of the picture to the right of the one in the middle of the screen it doesn't jump all over the place.)