A woman who made one of the initial 9-1-1 calls from this afternoon's Philpott Fire says she's in shock.
Cynthia Row was hiking up the High Rim Trail when she noticed helicopters flying overhead, so she hiked up higher to a ridge where she could see back down the hill.
After losing cell reception a couple of times, she hiked further up the hill.
"I got 9-1-1 again, and got the fire people, and they said that we can't fly you out of there. And I knew that. The weather from the fire, and the strong wind - and it's very dense and secluded, I was in a clearing and there's no way they could get me out. She (operator) didn't want to advise me to just go running off into the bush to escape the fire, but we agreed that if I stayed, I was going to die where I was. So I left the trail, and just headed down, and just kept heading down and bushwacking down," she said.
Row says she found her way onto some back trails, and got closer to the highway.
"I ran into another wall of flame just before I got to the highway, but I could see the highway suddenly, and I just deked around that, and came out on the highway," she said.
Row says this brush with disaster was unlike anything else she's been through.
"I'm in shock. I'm terrified. I mean, I was terrified, now I'm just in shock. (I have) a lot of experience in the bush, and I've never been this scared in my life. I've had encounters with bears, I've been lost for days, I've been in trouble and I've never experienced anything like this, this is frightning. I'm very lucky I got out."
Currently, the fire is an estimated 300 hectares, and forced the evacuation of 474 properties.