This Ceramic Artist Survived the Australian Wildfires by Crawling Inside His Kiln

As the flames hurtled toward artist Steve Harrison’s home in
rural Australia last month, he made every effort to defend his
property, powering up pumps and sprinklers in preparation for the
approaching inferno. But when it came time to evacuate, the road
had caught fire and the 67-year-old potter’s only option was to
climb inside his kiln and wait for the blaze to pass. Miraculously,
he survived.

“The fire was too big, too hot, too fast,” Harrison wrote on his
blog. “I couldn’t get
out.”

Fortunately, Harrison had built a makeshift kiln from fireproof
ceramic fiber the day before. Faced with no other choice, he
crawled inside with a bag of laptops and hard drives, a fire
extinguisher, a fire blanket, and a bottle of water.

“I was in there for half an hour while the firestorm went over.
It was huge, just glowing orange-red everywhere. Just scary. I was
terrified,” Harrison told Australian news outlet ABC.

When the ceramicist emerged, his home was still standing, but
the kiln shed, the kiln factory, and the wood shed, as well
the pottery gallery storing the artist’s work, had burned to the
ground.

“This was catastrophic,” an emotional Harrison told ABC. “You
can see when you look around, there is just nothing left.”

Harrison and his wife, Janine King, have lived on their
seven-acre property for 45 years. Priding themselves on
self-reliance and sustainability, they built solar-powered
facilities themselves from recycled materials and handmade mud
bricks, and live largely off their garden.

Their home is located outside the village of Balmoral in New
South Whales. Much of the town was destroyed by the
devastating Green Wattle Creek fire. Harrison and King have
had to rebuild after fires on two other occasions. A GoFundMe started in
their name has already raised more than $51,000, and Harrison
estimates it will take a year to rebuild.

“Another fire will come back in the next decade, and next time
it will be worse. I need to start preparing now,” he wrote, adding
that he plans to rebuild using entirely metal. “The global heating
crisis is going to keep on getting worse. Each fire is getting
bigger, hotter, more devastating, lasting longer.”

Harrison’s harrowing ordeal took place on December 21, but fires
are still raging across Australia a month later. The unprecedented
intensity of the brushfires is widely seen as evidence of a growing
crisis sparked by climate change.

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Wildfires by Crawling Inside His Kiln appeared first on artnet
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