An Orange City family is celebrating after precious family photos were recovered after a downtown fire. Reporter Samantha Suttle brings us the story of the unexpected recovery.

It was an unbelievable discovery.

"It was a miracle, that's what it was," says Elma Hiemstra, whose family photos were recovered.

More than 50 years of Hiemstra's family history recovered, after the building it was in, burned down.

"There's so much history in that box of pictures, I mean, places that we could not replace," says Hiemstra.

This summer, Elma's family left the box of nearly 800 family slides at the Hannah Photo Center in downtown Orange City so they could be converted into CD's. The project was completed, but the family didn't pick it up right away. And when the building on Central Avenue burned down, they feared the worst.

"I said, 'Oh there goes our pictures,' and that's about that that was, saddened by that," Hiemstra says.

Until last week, more than three months after the fire and before crews were scheduled to demolish the burned down building, the box of slides was found in a pile of rubble.

"It has been wonderful, pictures that we never figured that we'd see again," says Hiemstra.

The slides still sit neatly in the box, organized by the major events in the Hiemstra family story.

"Oh pictures are wonderful! Just wonderful. Nothing else can express what a picture can," says Hiemstra.

Irreplaceable images that are here to stay.

Surprisingly, the CD's were recovered intact too. So now the family can share their photo history with generations to come.