On Monday Sir Richard Branson announced the sad loss of his mother Eve at age 96, in a post celebrating her "wonderful life and tremendous spirit".
One of the more dramatic moments in that life was surely the unforgettable night in August 2011 when Eve and her fellow guests on Necker Island awoke to find themselves in the midst of a raging inferno.
This summer marks a decade since the dramatic scenes, in which Branson's luxury home on his private isle burnt to the ground.
Amazingly, all 20 people present escaped with their lives in the blaze, sparked after the mansion was hit at 4am by lightning during a tropical storm.
They included Eve, who was plucked from her bed at the eight-bedroom Great House on Necker Island by Oscar-winner Kate Winslet.
The Titanic star helped carry the former ballerina and air hostess from The Great House and both escaped unhurt, along with Winslet's young children and a number of other guests, including Branson's daughter Holly Branson.
Also present was Branson's nephew Ned Rocknroll. Now Ned Smith, he is Kate's husband and father of her son Bear Blaze.
Speaking on Ellen DeGeneres' chatshow years after the fire, Kate recalled: "Bear's second name is Blaze because my husband and I met in a house fire basically.
"The house burned down and we survived, but we wanted something of the fire and so Blaze was the name that we came up with. Bear Blaze."
Staying in a neighbouring smaller property with his wife and son Sam, Branson ran naked into a cactus bush as he tried to escape his burning home.
Speaking after the fire he joked: "I tried to get some sympathy for the fact that I’d jumped out of bed naked and rushed to the Great House in pitch darkness and hurricane force winds and ran straight in to a cactus bush – the sympathy was not forthcoming for my injuries!"
He added on a more serious note: "My office was based in the house and I have lost thousands of photographs and my note books which is very sad. But all family and friends are well - which in the end is all that really matters."
The tycoon rebuilt in 2013, but just a few years later the island was hard hit again - this time by Hurricane Irma.
That time Branson took shelter in his mansion's wine cellar as storms raged above ground, ravaging the isle.
He wrote in a blog post published on Virgin.com in 2017: "Much of the buildings and vegetation on Necker has been destroyed or badly damaged.
"We felt the full force of the strongest hurricane ever in the Atlantic Ocean."
The Virgin entrepreneur bought Necker Island in the early 1980s and began building the Great House in 1982.
