Chris Janson and his wife, Kelly, are counting their blessings, after they, along with their daughters Georgia and Jessie left their house unharmed following a recent house fire. The fire, which occurred earlier this month, damaged Janson’s basement studio, but their house remained intact.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” Janson tells People. “I’m grateful that the house didn’t burn down.”
Janson, who has been vocal about his Christian faith, credits God with saving his family’s lives.
“Thank God, God woke up my wife Kelly,” Janson shares. “If it weren’t for her hearing that faint ‘beep, beep’ of the fire detector, it could have been very bad … This was not a little fire. This was a legit, ‘7-foot flame, taller than me’ fire. It was a ‘melting my ceiling fan onto my ottoman’ fire.”
After Janson made sure everyone was safely out of the house, the Grand Ole Opry member began doing all he could to save his house while waiting for first responders.
“I went into survival mode,” Janson recounts. “The fire melted my ottoman and literally created a campfire essentially right in the middle of my studio room. Thankfully, it didn’t burn the house.”
While Janson is unsure exactly what started the fire that ravaged their basement, he has a hunch that it was an old laptop.
“The battery portion is burned up on it and is fused together with the charger,” Janson says. “I am quite convinced that it literally just got overheated and one thing led to another.”
It was the faint beeping of the smoke alarm that woke his wife up. Janson hopes by sharing his story, that others will make sure their smoke alarms work as well.
“I encourage people to check smoke alarms,” Janson urges. “It’s something we don’t think about, but in ours, all of the detectors were supposed to be hardwired in and they are, but for some reason they all didn’t go off at one time. Only the one in that one room was going off.”
Janson has several shows on the calendar this year, including shows as early as next month. Keep track of updates at ChrisJanson.com.