Fire rips through Raleigh apartment building

The fire started around 8 a.m. at an apartment in the Mission Capital Crossing Apartments complex on Dansey Drive, off New Hope Road north of Louisburg Road.

Shirley Fuller, 70, was inside her apartment when the fire started. She said she heard glass breaking before she saw the flames.

When she looked in her bedroom, the bed and the curtains were on fire, and she saw more flames when she looked out the back door.

"The black smoke started coming, and I couldn't see anything at all," Fuller said.

She and her boyfriend, as well as all of their neighbors were able to make it out of the building unharmed.

Raleigh Fire Department Division Chief Ian Toms said four apartments in the eight-unit building were damaged. The cause hasn't yet been determined, but authorities think it started on a patio.

"They'll have to rebuild that whole building," Toms said.

Even with her home and belongings destroyed, Fuller was more joyful than devastated.

"Everything is good. Everything is good. I'm blessed because I'm here," she said. "God is good. The material stuff, it ain't worth 5 cents. Even though I need it to live, I'm alive."

The Red Cross is helping the five people whose homes were destroyed. Fuller said she plans to stay with her daughter, calling the fire an opportunity or maybe even a message from God.

"I'm on a new chapter in my life, and maybe this is his way of telling me I have to move," she said with a laugh.