KEY POINTS:
Cricket legend Chris Cairns' wife and two boys were lucky to survive a house fire in Belgium earlier this year.
Chris, 37, was in London while wife Carin, 31, and sons Thomas, 5, and Bram, 3, were caught in an inferno in a friend's luxury home.
In an exclusive interview with Woman's Weekly, Cairns has revealed the horror and hopelessness he felt while speaking to his wife on her cellphone as she was trapped in a multistorey house, fighting for survival.
He says it was fortunate Carin spoke Dutch and was able to call the emergency services. The three were trapped in an upstairs bedroom as the house filled with hot, black smoke, caused by an electrical circuit explosion.
"We were running out of air," Carin told the Woman's Weekly.
"We couldn't see anything and the smoke was hot and choking us."