IN HER backyard on Tuesday morning, Pam la Frentz spots her late husband's dog tags buried among the twisted metal and ashes of a burnt-out caravan - his name is still clearly inscribed in the charred metal.
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Her voice briefly cracks with emotion as her fingers trace along the outline - 30 years of marriage was in that caravan.
Ms la Frentz lives with her father, 88-year-old Reg Hyde, and son Steven on Brownes Road in Salt Ash.
On Sunday their property was one of the worst hit by the fires that tore through the area and left two homes destroyed.
The outbuildings on their property were all lost - the caravan, sheds, a ceramics studio and a boat-building workshop that Mr Hyde had worked in for more than 30 years.
The first sign of trouble was the sound of two fire trucks driving past with sirens in the early afternoon.
Ms la Frentz went outside and saw smoke in the distance - she went to turn the sprinklers on and by the time she walked back the street was engulfed in smoke.
Within minutes the flames were upon them, 100km/h gusts of wind pushing the fire across the road and causing spot fires to break out in the yard.
"As soon as that happened I yelled out to dad 'I'm going to get [help]' because there were four trucks out the front by this stage tending to the house over the road because they really thought that would go," she said.
"I raced out the front and I said to one of the firies 'we've got a fire started in the backyard, it's going up the trees. Can you get a truck in here'?"
Soon nearly all the trees were alight, as was the boat shed.
"It was just a roar; it was just a complete roar," she said.
"By the time it hit the shed, the firies had to pull back because we had drums [containing flammable substances] going off that were shaking the ground."
Across the road, families were forced to abandon their home as flames took hold.
Katrina Booth and her family had only lived in Salt Ash since March and had never dealt with a bushfire before.
She estimated that it took 12 minutes for the puff of smoke she saw to transform into a roaring wave of flame that only stopped in her yard, metres from the house and not far enough to save their pet rabbit.
"I was driving down the road screaming 'we've lost our home, we've lost our home'," she said.
In Fingal Bay, where fires tore through the national park, Janinne Spowart, from Amaroo Crescent, said it was a miracle that her home was spared.
"It was a very scary and emotional day all in one," she said.
"At about 1.30pm we got the emergency text [and] within 35 minutes it was on top of us.
"There's a bit of a firebreak between us and the bush and the firies lit that to burn it back. It's lucky they did because if they hadn't we probably would have lost the house."
Ms Spowart was in awe of the effort of Rural Fire Service and Fire NSW crews.
"Their response was absolutely magnificent," she said.
"When it [the fire] was getting closer, they had probably three or four trucks in the cul-de-sac and 20 firies all manning hoses.
"They just stood there while the flames were coming and did not back down once."
