When Erik De Haart returned from Bali in 2002, he was seen as a hero. After bombs tore apart Kuta’s Sari Club, killing over 200 people on October 12, 2002, Erik was one of the survivors who spent hours pulling people out of the burning beach club.
The Coogee Dolphins rugby league club were having a team holiday in Bali and Erik and his mates had settled into the Sari club for post-dinner drinks. When a drunk friend began to stagger homebound out of the club, Erik offered to walk him safely back to the hotel.
It was that generous move that would save his life.
Once he returned, “it was a bizarre situation, there were cars burning, people running around on fire, people bleeding, there was blood and guts everywhere,” Erik tells Insight.
It wasn’t until a man thrust a girl’s body into Erik’s arms that he kicked into gear and ran back into the flames looking for people to save. He lost count of how many.
While he became an Australian spokesperson for what happened on that infamous day in Indonesia, Erik always held onto his biggest decision.
Erik de Haart, on Insight. Source: Insight
“I’d probably been in and out half a dozen times, pulled people out and as I worked my way deeper into the club, I heard three girls crying,” he says.
Knee-deep in flames and confronted by a collapsed roof, it may have only been 30 seconds of contemplation but to Erik, it felt like hours.
“I was telling myself I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t survive the trip going over once, let alone coming backwards and forwards three times to pull these girls out”.
It was only in the last month that Erik has been able to own up to the decision he made when the stakes were so high.
“I’ve taken ownership of the decision to hand in those girls and I found it very, very, very hard to forgive myself”.
What did Erik decide to do? And how has the decision affected him since? | - Catch up online now:
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