Spanish Fork Family Grateful Nobody Harmed In Devastating House Fire

SPANISH FORK, Utah – A family spoke for the first time Wednesday about a harrowing escape from the devastating house fire that displaced them.

Roland Webster said he was asleep downstairs last week when he awakened to the sounds of banging on his window and crackling upstairs.

When he came up the stairs, he ran into thick smoke.

“I knew at that point it was real bad,” Webster said. “I rounded the corner and looked in the kitchen and the whole entire stove was ablaze, the whole entire back wall was ablaze and the flames were just consuming the cabinets at this point and flames coming out across the top of the ceiling and when I saw that, it was very frightening.”

Webster said he ducked and immediately ran out the front door to find his children in the yard. They were the ones who were trying to wake him up.

“I just went and grabbed them, hugged them,” Webster paused.

Wife Missy Webster was in Peru at the time on a mission for Eagle Condor Humanitarian and had been helping to dig sewer lines for a shelter for abused women when she received the news her home was burning.

“All of a sudden we’re changing and getting ready for dinner and my phone started blowing up and sure enough neighbors and friends and everybody started saying, ‘Your house is on fire, your house is on fire,’” she said. “It was a very scary moment.”

Much of the inside of the house was left blackened, melted and barely recognizable.

A cat died while a lizard survived.

Roland and Missy Webster found their framed wedding photo mostly intact.

“You feel like you’re in a haunted house and you’re like, this is not my house,” Missy Webster said. “We lost a cat. That was hard, but all of us are still together.”

The family was staying with friends as of Wednesday while seeking something more permanent.

They said they were grateful for all the help they had already received from friends, neighbors and the surrounding community.

“It’s been a little hard being on the other side, but I’m very grateful for people around here being willing to do humanitarian to me,” Webster said.

A GoFundMe account* had been set up to help support the family.

Roland Webster said he was grateful his wife was out of harm’s way and that he and his two children made it out safely on one of their worst days.

“’We’re alive and I’m alive and you got me out,’” he told his children. “Today it was just good enough.”

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*KSL TV does not assure that the money deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisers and otherwise proceed at your own risk.