Runner Turia Pitt tells of horror bushfire ordeal

TURIA Pitt has told how she tried to outrun a firefront at last year's disastrous Racing the Planet's ultramarathon.

Turia Pitt

MUMMIFIED by a head-to-toe decompression suit that may one day help heal her horrific burns, part-time model and engineer Turia Pitt has told how she tried to outrun a massive firefront that swept through last year's disastrous Racing the Planet's ultramarathon.

Giving evidence in a West Australian parliamentary inquiry examining last year's Kimberley event, which ended in four competitors being seriously burnt, Ms Pitt, a mining engineer with Rio Tinto, said there was "nowhere else to go" as they all tried to outrun an out of control blaze that swept up Selena Gorge, just outside Kununurra, on September 2 last year.

Ms Pitt tired, stopped and covered her head with her jacket.

"It just got hotter and hotter and hotter and I couldn't stand it anymore so I jumped up and tried to run and that's when I got burned," she said.

Yesterday, the 24-year-old moved slowly as she was helped out of a wheelchair taxi.

She suffered burns to 64 per cent of her body, lost her fingers and thumb on her right hand, spent five months in hospital and will need at least 10 to 15 further operations.

She said she "earned a pretty good living" at Rio Tinto in Kununurra before the fire but now cannot work and relies on Centrelink. Her partner, Michael, has stopped work to care for her.

Her lawyer, Greg Walsh, said Ms Pitt and three other runners would consider civil action against Racing the Planet, which he claimed failed to warn them at the second checkpoint of the approaching fire, or stop them from continuing the race despite evidence the organisers had been warned of the fire. "I got to the checkpoint, sat down and had some water and then they (the organisers) are like, 'Well, you are right to go'," Ms Pitt said.

The inquiry has heard there were fires in the area before the race but organisers did not ask the WA Fire and Emergency Services Authority for bushfire advice.

Ms Pitt, from Ulladulla on the NSW south coast, said she tired as she scaled an embankment, having run 30km that day. Organisers were unable to communicate properly between checkpoints, the inquiry was told.

Fellow competitors heard her scream, including Kate Sanderson, who had already been badly burned. Ms Sanderson spent six months in hospital, lost part of her foot and the use of her hands.