During the season 15 premiere of her TV show, Rachael Ray showed the ruins of her home destroyed by fire.
Rachael Ray opened the 15th season of her television show with a heartfelt recollection of the August blaze that destroyed her family home, and told viewers to practice fire safety in these strange times.
The celebrity chef opened Monday's broadcast of the "Rachael Ray Show" with a tour of her devastated home in New York's Adirondack Mountains. She and her husband, John, were at home when the house caught fire, and they escaped with just a few prized possessions, including their dog.
"I heard the fire in the walls," she told viewers. "It was blood-curdling and chilling from head to toe. I turn to leave and there was a first responder right in front of me, (saying) 'Get out, get out now. You have to go.'"
"I went to get the dog, and that was it," she says. "We left our house."
The inferno began with a creosote, or a byproduct of wood combustion, that shot through the chimney and landed on their roof, Ray said.
Ray had the fireplace going because it was a chilly night and she and her husband were just sitting down to dinner when they heard a man screaming behind their home.
"A person was going through our backyard on an ATV and was kind enough to come down the hill and say, 'Your roof's on fire.' Literally screaming it in our backyard," she said. "We went outside (and) sure enough, that was the case."
Ray ran upstairs to grab some photos, notebooks and prescriptions while her husband ran to his music studio and grabbed a prized guitar.
"We literally were just watching our house burn and burn and burn," John said. "It wouldn't stop. You're just thinking, 'Oh God, what's going to be left?'"
Their 15-year-old home is a total loss and will be razed, they said. They will have to rebuild.
For now, the show is being taped in a temporary studio on their property. Ray encouraged her viewers to have their chimneys checked, as winter approaches, and to be vigilant about fire safety procedures.
"I think what we've learned since the house burned is just waves of gratitude that we're alive and all the people that have reached out to us — people that we know and total strangers from all over the world," she said. "I've gotten handwritten, real mail from people all over. So many folks understand and have been through this."
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