Lungi Langa
NOT having enough money to buy food during a break between lectures led to a Durban teenager arriving home just in time to save his family’s burning home yesterday.
Marc Bowes-Taylor, 19, a social sciences student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Howard College, arrived at his Clair Avenue home in Glenwood with three friends and saw smoke.
Realising the house was on fire, he prioritised saving his family’s three dogs and his 10 snakes. When he arrived, the dogs were already barking at the door. After letting them out, he went upstairs to save his collection of snakes.
It appeared that the fire had started in his bedroom, which was gutted. Another bedroom and a bathroom were damaged.
The fire spread through a passage to the kitchen, damaging walls along its path.
Bowes-Taylor’s mother, Anne, a Grade 3 teacher at St Henry’s Marist Brothers’ College – a nearby school – was in class when she was told that her home was on fire.
She and pupils had smelled the smoke from the fire but had not realised that it was coming from her home.
“I kept on wondering where the smell was coming from,” she said. “I then got a call and ignored it. Then my son called to tell me that the house was burning.”
She and another son, Kyle, a sports master at the school, rushed home to find Marc, his friends, her husband Ian and the Durban central fire department trying to douse the fire. The family lost a computer, a printer, linen, books, clothing and other valuables.
Anne said the family would live with her mother-in-law while their home was being repaired.
Fire department division commander Owen Singh said he suspected an electric fault had caused the fire.