FAITH — Four dogs were killed in a house fire early this morning on Pine Lake Road.
Donna Isenhour, the homeowner, said the house was rented, but the tenant was in the hospital and the tenant’s two children were staying with relatives.
Isenhour said her mother-in-law’s sister, who lives nearby, heard a loud noise about 4 a.m. and saw the fire.
By the time she called 911, the home was too far gone, she said.
“She heard a boom, came out and saw the flames,” Isenhour said.
Isenhour was at the gutted home this morning, looking through the blackened rubble for salvageable property.
Some parts of the house were still smoking.
But Isenhour said it could have been worse.
“Thank God they weren’t here,” she said, referring to the tenant and the tenant’s children.
Isenhour said emergency crews told her the fire may have started in an air conditioning unit.
“They think it was an air conditioning unit in the window,” she said.
Rowan County Fire Investigator Deborah Horne said the two-alarm fire is still under investigation.
“The fire started in the garage and spread to the rest of the house,” Horne wrote in an e-mail.
The tenant was in the process of moving out and Isenhour’s son was planning to move into the home, Isenhour said.
Isenhour, her three children and her husband, now deceased, lived in the home previously.
“We still had some personal belongings in the garage, which are now destroyed,” she said.
Kate Meier, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, said the organization is working to assist the tenant.
“We will be there for the family to offer them assistance as needed,” Meier said.