Neighbors rescue women from fire
An ordinary Saturday afternoon chore of gutter cleaning suddenly turned chaotic for a Butler father and son and proved serendipitous for their neighbors whose house caught fire.
The blaze started about 1:30 p.m. due to a cooking accident at a two-story rental house on the 400 block of Fairview Avenue, Butler Fire Department officials said.
Before the fire was out, three people — one of them a tenant and two others staying or visiting at the home — had to climb onto a roof to escape the flames.
The couple that lives there suffered minor injuries, said Butler Fire Capt. Scott Marshall. Their children, 1 and 2 years old, were unharmed. The home was destroyed.
But if not for the quick action of next-door neighbor Billy Joe Stewart and his son, Cody, the results could have been worse.
Stewart and his sons were outside preparing to clean gutters at their home. The collapsible ladder was in place.
“I just got the ladder two months ago,” said Stewart, who works at Ibis Tek.
Before they knew it, their neighbors' house was on fire. Levi Collins and Christina Kirkendall live there with their young daughters, authorities said.
Collins was in the kitchen cooking tater tots on the stovetop, Marshall said. Kirkendall was in the upstairs bathroom. The kids were on the second floor, too.
The pan of hot grease apparently caught fire, Marshall said, and Collins tried to take it outside. But some of the grease spilled onto the kitchen floor, which caught fire.“He said he tried to put out the fire but then thought, 'My kids,' ” Marshall said.He went upstairs, got the children and took them out of the house.“He brought them out the front,” Stewart said. “I asked him, “Is there anybody else still in the house? He says, 'Yeah.' He seemed like he was panicking. So I'm hollering in there to get out of the house as fast as they can.”Smoke and flames were coming out the kitchen window and other windows, Stewart said.At some point, a young man and two women, one of them Kirkendall, appeared on the roof of a first-floor extension in back of the house. Fire officials said Kirkendall had been in the bathroom taking a bath.“We grabbed that ladder and went as fast as we could as soon as we saw them up there,” Stewart said.By the time he and Cody got to the house with the ladder, the man had jumped off the roof to safety. But the two women were still stuck on the roof.“They were both crying,” Stewart said.He and Cody opened up the ladder and put it up against the house.“I was helping to hold it,” Cody said.One of the women came down. But Kirkendall was scared.“She was afraid to come down,” Stewart said. “She said she was afraid of heights.” He guessed it was a 12- to 14-foot drop from the roof. “I say, 'You're going to have to come down.”
The fire, meanwhile, grew.“By that time,” Stewart said, “you could literally see flames in the windows and smoke pouring out. The whole house was engulfed.”He continued trying to coax Kirkendall to come down the ladder. The roof, too, was starting to get too hot to stand on. She finally summoned the courage to come down.“He probably saved her life,” Marshall said of Stewart.Moments later, fire crews arrived. Firefighters put water on neighboring homes to keep them from catching fire, Marshall said. Soon, an attack crew went into the house and the blaze was contained in about 15 minutes.The Butler Township Volunteer Fire District and the Butler VA Fire Department assisted.Collins suffered minor burns on his feet and Kirkendall apparently had smoke inhalation. A Butler Ambulance Service crew treated them at the scene.The house was ruled a total loss. Damage was estimated at $70,000. The owner, Lynn Ott, had insurance. The tenants did not have renter's insurance.“It was scary,” Stewart said, in recounting the events. “It was pretty intense. You didn't want anybody to get hurt.”
