'Miraculous': West Michigan pastor reflects on surviving house fire with children

ROBINSON TWP. — A local family says they've deepened their faith, friendships and gratitude for life after surviving a fire that consumed their home just days before Thanksgiving.

Steph Mangan, 36, and Tim Mangan, 40, moved to Grand Haven in 2011 after meeting in Australia. They're full-time pastors at Life Church in Grand Haven, with a non-denominational congregation of around 250.

In the early morning hours of Nov. 21, Steph awoke suddenly — not typical of the deep sleeper. She was in their bedroom, an addition to their two-story Robinson Township home, separated by a brick and concrete wall.

“I didn’t hear what woke me up, but from hearing what the neighbors said later, it sounds like an explosion is what woke me,” she said. “But I opened my eyes and I couldn’t hear anything.

"I would have (normally) gone back to sleep, except that … I saw on the white wall in the corner just flames, bright red. That room — if you went there right now because they haven’t demolished it yet — never was on fire, because the bricks protected it from the heat on the other side. It was like I was seeing what was on the other side.”

Tim and 11-year-old daughter Willow were in Australia visiting family at the time. The other three children — Tristyen (13), Brooklyn (9), and Indie (7) — were asleep on the second floor in the original house structure.

She ran upstairs and yelled for her children to wake up and run.

Normally, Steph said, she's anxious in high-stress situations. Earlier this year, when someone ran into a telephone pole near their home, she couldn’t get herself to dial 911, couldn’t remember her address and was shaking.

“It was like God gave us perfect clarity of mind and peace,” Steph said of the fire. “No one stopped to grab anything.”

As she and the kids ran down the stairs, she said, the pressure of the fire started to break the glass, allowing more smoke to fill the home.

“The fire was humongous out the back at this point — so as soon as those glass windows started breaking from the heat, then the smoke started to come in,” Steph said. “But God held back the flames to the degree that my kids didn’t even cough, they didn’t even cough as they were coming down the stairs.”

It was only after her children were outside and safe that Steph thought about their pets and her purse, with her car keys and other important cards and documents. She estimated it'd been less than a minute since she woke up.

“I’m thinking I should go back in for the animals and the purse, and I open the door and already the whole house is so thick with smoke it was impassible,” Steph said. “And the fire is coming in and all you’re hearing is all that glass breaking, so I didn’t even go back in.”

A cat and dog followed the family out of the home as they escaped, but another dog and a bunny died in the fire.

The cause of the fire was “spontaneous combustion of rags,” Steph said. She and Tim had been staining their deck and left a pile of oily rags.

The Robinson Township Fire Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but Steph said the firefighters told her, typically, “nobody walks out of a house fire like that.”

“All I could think and feel was thankfulness,” Steph said. “It was absolutely miraculous that (God) protected them.”

Although there were many reasons to grieve the loss — Steph said she built doors and painted walls in that home — she felt grounded in that moment.

Immediately following the loss of their home, the couple's church congregation, family and friends swooped in to help. Three of the firefighters who responded attend Life Church.

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“Our church community definitely blew us out of the water with their generosity and the way they took care of us,” Steph said. “But even people we didn’t know. You know how you think all the terrible things you hear about humanity? And then, how many people that we don’t even know were so genuinely compassionate and caring astounded me."

The Mangans are in the process of having the home demolished and plan to rebuild at the same location.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: 'Miraculous': West Michigan pastor reflects on surviving house fire with children