Kings Mountain family narrowly escapes house fire

Ray Goodson woke up early Saturday morning to an odd smell, like something was burning in his oven.

"Like it was charring," he said. "And I knew when I went to bed, my son was still up. I didn't know if he'd burned a pizza or something."

Goodson opened his bedroom door, looked across the hall, and saw what was burning: a closet, which shared a wall with his son's bedroom, was fully engulfed in flames.

"The whole closet on the other side of the house was like a fireplace. It was just consuming that side of the house. Pictures had already started falling off the walls," he said. "The lights in the ceiling were melting down. It was extremely hot."

Goodson's home on Lunsford Drive, near Crowders Mountain, was destroyed, but he, his son, Dustin, and his nearly 1-year-old grandson, Colter, made it out of the house ― barely.

"We both come to the front door, and we opened up the door. The storm door was locked and the handle had melted, broke off," he said. "I tried pushing on it. It wouldn't open. I tried shaking it. It wouldn't open."

He broke the door down.

"Probably the closest to being passed out me and my son have ever been," he said. "I didn't even grab nothing."

Goodson, the pastor of Good News Tabernacle in Bessemer City, believes God saved him from the fire.

"I can't even sleep right now. Every time I go to sleep, I wake up thinking something is on fire," he said. "God had his hands on us. God woke us up."

More than that, he believes God also saved his son. The closet that shared a wall with his son's bedroom was an inferno, and it burned the piping that runs to a nearby shower. Water from the shower shot out at the wall next to his son's bed, preventing it from going up in flames.

"You call it what you want, but that's God," he said.

Goodson's wife, Angela, was on a trip to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, when their house burned.

"I am overwhelmed, but I am grateful," she said. "Could have lost my husband, my son and my grandson in just an instant."

Now, the family needs to "pick up the pieces and keep moving forward," she said.

The two paid off their home a month ago, and because they were in a rent-to-own contract, they did not have home insurance in their name.

"We were celebrating ownership," Ray Goodson said.

They hope to rebuild somehow, as they own the land.

"I just leave it in God's hands," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Kings Mountain family narrowly escapes house fire