Chris Janson Shares Details of Terrifying House Fire: ‘I’m Just Grateful to Be Alive’ [Pictures]
Chris Janson and his family are thankful after surviving a terrifying scrape unscathed. The country singer says God saved him, his wife Kelly and their children when a fire broke out in their home in the middle of the night.
The "Waitin' on 5" singer tells People that he and his family were asleep when his wife, Kelly, woke up after hearing the sound of a faint beep coming from his studio room at their home outside of Nashville. His studio is located beneath the couple's bedroom, and the beep was coming from the smoke alarm in that room — which turned out to be the only alarm in their house that went off.
Janson's wife got herself and their children to safety, and he used buckets of water to try to fight what he describes as a significant fire until the fire department arrived.
"This was not a little fire," Janson shares. "This was a legit, '7-foot flame, taller than me' fire. It was a 'melting my ceiling fan onto my ottoman' fire."
Kelly Janson turned to social media on April 15 to share pictures of the damage from the blaze, saying they were "counting our blessings" that the outcome wasn't worse.
"Thank God, God woke up my wife Kelly," Janson reflects. "If it weren't for her hearing that faint 'beep, beep' of the fire detector, it could have been very bad."
"I went into survival mode," he states. "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."
Janson believes an old laptop might have overheated and caused the fire. He says a clean-up crew has been "gutting the whole bottom" of the house to repair the damage done, but the fire spared a book that is very special to him and his wife — their Jesus Calling devotional book.
"It's not quite a Bible, but we have read from it since we were dating," Janson explains. "The one that had been sitting on the ottoman was a spare copy since we keep the original copy by our bed. But it was one of the only things on the ottoman not completely burned up. I've said it multiple times, but God has our back. There is no other reason that Kelly would have woken up that night to that faint 'beep beep.'"
Janson encourages fans to check their smoke alarms, adding that while his are hardwired together, "for some reason they all didn't go off at one time. Only the one in that one room was going off."
"I'm just grateful to be alive," Janson states. "I'm grateful that the house didn't burn down."
Chris Janson recently announced tour dates for 2021. His 2021 Back at It Tour launched on April 16 in Meridian, Miss., and it is slated to run through Dec. 9, when it wraps in Detroit.