A family spent six days trapped in a cinema before being rescued by the Australian military as catastrophic bushfires raged around them, according to a new report.
Canadian woman Meaghan Wegg and her Australian husband, Tim Buckley, took refuge in the cramped cinema with their two young children and 500 other people when they became trapped in the popular coastal vacation town of Mallacoota on Dec. 31.
“We got here and it felt like a death trap, to be honest,” Wegg told CNN on Monday.
Large bushfires encircled the Victorian town on New Year’s Eve — stranding more than 4,000 people who were seen sheltering on beaches with breathing masks under blood red skies in photos that went viral around the world.
Wegg, her husband, and their children, Georgia, 3, and Jackson, 5, had just arrived in Australia from Montreal, Canada, to visit relatives and were enjoying a day at the beach when they were told to evacuate as the temperature reached 104 degrees and the blaze bore down.
They huddled with hundreds of other people in an overheated cinema as ash from the approaching infernos drifted in through the building’s air vents and covered people inside, the CNN report said.
The family of four spent nearly a week sleeping on a gymnastic crash mat before they were evacuated on a military helicopter.
“I handwashed all of our clothes and hung to dry (but) couldn’t get rid of the fire smell,” Wegg told CNN.
“January 3 was my daughter Georgia’s third birthday. We made it as fun as we could, we gathered up 12 kids from friends and family and played games.”
The family said they “counted their blessings” during the ordeal and were finally evacuated Sunday.
Wegg said it would take them time to recover from the shock of the experience.
The bushfires, the worst in the country’s history, have killed at least 25 people and are being fueled by record-breaking temperatures and an extended period of drought, according to the Guardian.
There are fears that entire species have been wiped out in the blazes, while up to 30 percent of the country’s koala population is believed to have been killed.
