It was when their TV suddenly died that pensioners Andrew and Schalkie Theunissen decided to check outside.
Their entire garden was on fire. Sparks and flames blazed through the front door.
"My husband was watching cricket when he said there's no picture on the TV," said Schalkie, 74, describing the moment nine days ago when a firestorm slammed into Betty's Bay in the Overberg.
"When I opened the door the heat and sparks came in."
They were trapped in the middle of an inferno, unable to reach their car and fearing the worst. They had known about the fire but had no idea it was so close.
Moments later they heard a bakkie pull up and their son burst in. He threw his 84-year-old father over his shoulder and carried him across the burning lawn to the couple's car. Then he shoved his mother into the driver's seat and told her to leave. Fast.
She reversed straight into his bakkie.
"At this stage the grass was burning right under the car," recalled Andrew Theunissen jnr. "I thought it was the end."
But both vehicles got away just in time, with Andrew waiting for his parents to leave the property before pulling out himself.
A few metres down the road, Andrew saw his parents' car in a ditch. His mother had driven off the road and straight into a bush, which was starting to burn.
Andrew jumped into the ditch and manhandled his partly-sighted father out of the back seat while his mother escaped from the front. When they finally all got away in the bakkie there were flames leaping over the bonnet.
"It's really all a bit of a blank," Andrew jnr said of the ordeal. "I don't know how I got the strength."
He said at one stage, while carrying his father, a piece of the burning house fell, knocking them down. When his father battled to get up, Andrew yelled at him. "I screamed: 'Come on, Dad, this is not the day to die!'"
Other residents had similar escapes.
Janet Neser and her husband were unable to flee their igloo-shaped house. The home turned out to be fireproof.
"Through two side windows we could see the flames passing - it was terrifying. At one stage we thought we would either be burnt in our own house or suffocate," Neser said.
"We built the house like that [with a dome-shaped roof] because of the north-west wind which takes roofs off, not ever thinking it would save us from fire."
Another woman and her son were trapped in their bathroom. One stood under the shower, the other lay in the bath. Both survived.
Many residents said it appeared that the fire's speed had caught everyone by surprise.
The fire wrapped half the town in a fiery cloud and left no time for proper evacuations. Some residents said they had not been warned to leave.
Several people said it was a miracle that everyone survived, although a woman died in the adjoining town of Pringle Bay and there were reports of burns, including at least one serious case.
A visit to the area this week revealed a town still coming to terms with the disaster.
"Most of us thought we would wake up and it would be fine. But today I realised it would not," said a woman whose house burnt down.
A charred swathe of destruction was visible running northwest from above the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden in Betty's Bay right through the lower part of town called Sunny Seas, where many of the homes were nestled among the bush - to their detriment.
Incredibly, when the Theunissens returned to their house after the blaze, only a small part had burnt in the front. Their dogs were hiding under a bed.
In the front garden a charred slipper among burnt grass bore testimony to their frantic escape.
A bandaged Andrew Theunissen snr, resting in the lounge of his son's Kleinmond home, smiled while recounting his own fire experience.
"I was thinking, I'm 84, so I couldn't care if I die. I was worried about my wife."
Of his son he said: "I am so proud of him. He saved us. It was very, very close."
A 34-year-old man appeared in the Caledon magistrate's court this month in connection with the fire. He has been accused of causing the fire by discharging a flare during a New Year's Eve celebration...