ROANOKE RAPIDS — New hope dawns for a family who came across country to start a new life, with a new family in the Roanoke Valley.

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They found a house to rent to make their home. Then fire burned their new life and they must now rebuild in a new home.

John and Kim Gabriel and their daughter Shelby came to Roanoke Rapids from Enid, Okla., a little more than a month ago. The prospect of new family relationships brought them here; Kim learned, at the age of 47, her father lived in Roanoke Rapids, a father she’d never met, a father who didn’t even know she existed until this past December. 

After making initial contact with her father, Kim moved her family to Roanoke Rapids. They stayed with her dad, Bob Lyons, while they looked for a home to rent — they have two 65-pound Boxer dogs so a house with a yard was necessary — and they believed they’d found such a home on Harris Street. 

Their first snag came when they tried getting gas service. Piedmont Gas required a $400 deposit, which the family did not have, but they moved their possessions into the home in anticipation of their tax refund, which would enable them to pay the gas deposit and get the house heated.

In the meantime, to prevent the pipes from freezing, Kim and John Gabriel decided to buy two brand-new electric heaters, which would not provide enough heat for the family but should have been enough to prevent pipe damage.

On Sunday morning, Jan. 31, one of those electric heaters, it is believed, caused a fire which destroyed nearly everything the Gabriel family owned and provided a setback to their new life.

“The whole front half of the house is destroyed,” Kim Gabriel said. “Everything that was in the front two rooms of the house is gone.”

Luckily, the family has found a new home and John has found a new job, with Boyd Brother’s Trucking. "We found a new house," Kim Gabriel announced happily.

The find comes after much struggle. The family needed to find someone willing to rent to a family with large dogs and was willing to be flexible on the deposit. "The owner of the property is going to let us pay out a deposit a little bit at a time," Gabriel said. "Now we just have to figure out a way to furnish it."

With the fire behind them and a new place to live secured, the Gabriel family still needs help. Since they hadn’t yet moved into the home that burned, they did not have renters insurance, and the only items they possessed were the clothes they were wearing and a suitcase with another day’s worth of clothes. 

Although they have received clothing donations since the fire, the clothes have only really helped Kim and Shelby.

“John is large, so not a lot of people have clothes that will fit him,” Kim Gabriel stated. “Angel’s Closet and the Union Mission don’t have stuff in his size.”

Gabriel also said she’s beginning to realize some of what she’s lost. “I realized (Wednesday) that my grandmother’s blanket was on the bed,” Gabriel stated. “There was a quilt that my grandmother had made.” Nothing on the bed survived the fire.

Other items easily taken for granted have been missed. “Things like towels, washcloths, blankets,” Gabriel stated. “All that stuff’s gone. You don’t really think about those things until you need them.”

The Gabriels also learned the fire took vital documents. “My husband and my daughter’s birth certificates were in the house, they burned,” Gabriel said. Not having those birth certificates has caused a number of headaches, including the inability to apply for any sort of assistance.

Gabriel noticed, “You have good times and you forget about it for a few minutes but then you go to look for something and you realize it’s gone. I forget that everything is gone. It happens to me a lot.”

There is some good news for the family. The Weldon Fire Department has allowed their firehouse, located across from the Halifax Community College beneath the water tower, to be used for donations to be dropped off and donations can also be made to C&W Florist in Roanoke Rapids. The State Employees Credit Union has opened an account for monetary donations —  anyone interested may simply go to SECU and tell them they want to make a donation to John and Kim Gabriel; they will see it gets where it needs to go.

“They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Gabriel said. “Well, we ought to be real strong. This is tough for us, but people have lost their lives in fires that weren’t nearly as severe as this one was.”

Now moving into the new house is priority one and Gabriel feels very excited another type of deposit will not be necessary, "It's a roof and it doesn't have natural gas!"