Turia Pitt reflects on the fire, 10 years on

A decade on from the horrific fire that left her with devastating injuries, Turia Pitt admits she is left feeling sick and triggered, and reveals the lessons she has learnt since that fateful day.

A few months ago, Turia Pitt needed to track down her hospital records from the period after she was caught in a grass fire while running an ultra-marathon in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Years on from the horrific event, a surgeon was preparing to operate on her nose and needed information from one of her previous nasal-reconstruction surgeries.

When the records were delivered to her home on the NSW south coast she was busy with her sons, but once she’d put the boys to bed she slipped the USB, delivered with the paperwork, into her laptop.

She was shocked by the images she saw.

“I’m more empathetic now. I think that’s my superpower.” (Picture: Supplied)

In front of her were photos of doctors performing escharotomies, where the burnt skin is sliced to reduce swelling and restore circulation. She took in the nail polish on her toes, the eggshell white of her flesh, the gaping wounds.

“I felt sick; I wasn’t expecting to see that and it was very triggering,” says Pitt, who barely slept that night.

A decade on from the fateful fire on September 2, 2011, that left her with severe burns to 65 per cent of her body, Pitt can’t predict when memories of that time might upset her. “If I think about it I’ll just remind myself that it’s OK to think about it,” she tells Stellar.

“I try to be compassionate with myself and give myself some leeway.”

Plans to mark the occasion by spending a weekend with other survivors of the fire have been scuppered by Covid so instead the 34-year-old will focus on enjoying the day with her fiancé Michael Hoskin and their sons, Hakavai, 3, and Rahiti, 18 months.

Curiously, it’s neither her survival nor her resilience that are paramount in her mind as she contemplates the past 10 years. Instead, she chooses to stay focused on who she has become.

“Some aspects of my life are different and it doesn’t sound terribly profound but some parts are the same,” she says.

Turia Pitt in her compression mask, which she wore for two years to help her skin heal. (Picture: Supplied)

“I’m definitely more empathetic now. I think that’s my superpower.”

If she celebrates anything, it will be her relationship with the man who has been alongside her every day since.

“I’m really proud of my relationship with Michael,” she says of Hoskin, who she’s been with since 2009, two years before the fire.

“We’ve been through something catastrophic and extremely traumatic and, this may sound naff, but we’re living our best lives and we’re happy. We have these beautiful kids together, and while we’re not perfect, we accept each other. It’s really easy to like someone for their good qualities and want to change their not-so-sparkling qualities. We’re good at accepting each other for who we are.”

All these years later, it would be simplistic to position Pitt’s story as a linear tale of triumph over adversity. There’s no doubt she’s an extraordinary woman who, through sheer grit and resilience, has propelled her life experience into a career that helps guide and motivate others.

Turia Pitt and her fiancé Michael Hoskin with their sons, Hakavai (left) and Rahiti, earlier this year. (Picture: Supplied)

Yet what makes her so compelling to her coaching clients, fans of her new podcast Turia Pitt Is Hard Work and 980,000 followers on Instagram is her humour and candour.

For every hardship – the daily restrictions that come with only having three fingers,

or Hoskin currently working as a helicopter pilot based in Far North Queensland – she tries to find a positive.

Ergo, it makes her happy that Michael has a career he loves, and mothering with such reduced hand function gives her a huge sense of competence: “When I realised I was dressing the kids, changing them, putting on their shoes and socks, making their lunches and putting them in and out of the car, I felt really empowered.”

While the couple have been engaged for five years, Pitt explains they haven’t made marriage top of their agenda. As she tells Stellar: “One of us will say, ‘Oh maybe we should get married next year’ and the other will say, ‘Yeah, that would be cool.’ But then neither one of us follows through with it.”

“If I look in the mirror I might be critical about some aspect of my appearance but I feel like even women who are conventionally attractive may do that.” (Picture: Supplied)

She’s focused more on the operation on her nose. Her skin and hands have taken priority in the 200 or so operations she’s had in the past 10 years but now she wants to breathe properly; to inhale the scent of her sons and the sea air and the big, buoyant life she’s created for herself in the aftermath of so much pain and suffering.

“I’ve been trying to get my nose fixed for the past five years but getting more function in my hands has been higher on the priority list,” she says.

“But I really want to be able to breathe through my nose, so the surgeons are going to put more fat around it to make it more supple and mobilise it.”

Turia Pitt features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

While she occasionally daydreams about how her life might have unfolded had she not had the accident, Pitt says she generally deals with what’s in front of her. Some days that will be frustration that she can’t open a water bottle, other days it will be an unhappiness with how she looks.

“If I look in the mirror I might be critical about some aspect of my appearance but I feel like even women who are conventionally attractive may do that as well,” she says thoughtfully.

“It’s not just a problem I face, that’s what a lot of women go through.”

Yet on balance, she concludes that the fire has left her with something so much greater than it took: gratitude. “Having gone through what I have, I [now] have such a sense of appreciation for the people in my life,” Pitt reveals.

“They’re the most important thing – and my accident has made me understand that.”

Turia Pitt is the guest on today’s episode of the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About with Samantha Armytage, available wherever you listen to your podcasts.