A harrowing tale is coming to light following last week’s disastrous fire in Adam’s Cove.

Tina Dale moved back to Adam’s Cove in January to help her parents after her father fell ill. She says she and her parents were forced to flee their house in such haste that they didn’t even have shoes on their feet when the smoke and flame suddenly bore down on them.

She told VOCM Open Line with Paddy Daly they’re still shaken by the trauma and how close they came to dying in their home.

Dale says she was outside doing yardwork when she started to smell smoke. She didn’t think much of it, before the flames were upon them.

She decided to drive out the road to have a look, and saw an “inferno of flames just going up into the sky” in an area over the hill a distance from their home. She drove back to the house and told her parents they had to leave, and by the time her mother got her coat, the flames were all around them.

Dale says the fire was burning on a property across the road and by then, the smoke was so thick, it was difficult to see. She says her mother can’t walk and her father uses a walker, but somehow she managed to get them in the car.

By the time they got to the doorstep Dale says they encountered an “inferno of heat and smoke and stuff flying around. When we got down to the bottom of the driveway, I couldn’t see, I didn’t know if I was on the road; I just used my sense of direction. We just drove out the road a little ways, and then, we were out of the fire.”

Dale says the house was leveled and they lost everything. She’s thanking the many people who have provided them with clothing and personal items to get them through as they await further instruction from the province on possible assistance.