Spanish Fork • To presume that congestive heart failure might stop Kenneth Larsen from running up a steep flight of stairs through billows of acrid smoke is to violate a family rule:
Never underestimate Grandpa.
The 67-year-old died Wednesday after saving his grandson from a fire that trapped both men on the second floor of their Spanish Fork home.
"On an average day, he would not have made it up the stairs," said the grandson, 18-year-old Zack Loftin. "He was on oxygen 24/7. He can’t even walk 20 feet without having to sit and rest."
But when a fire broke out about noon, Larsen abandoned his oxygen machine and climbed the stairs to wake Loftin, who was asleep after a late night.
"I woke up and heard all this banging," Loftin said. "It was my grandfather, banging on the walls to wake me up. He was screaming and yelling."
Larsen pushed past the fire in a bedroom at the top of the stairs and joined his grandson in the rear of the home, 275 N. 700 East. Loftin said he opened every window in the back two bedrooms, called 911 and yelled down to his aunt to find a ladder. She sent her husband upstairs to help Loftin and Larsen, but the flames were too intense, Loftin said.
Larsen went into the bathroom. He was standing over the sink the last time Loftin saw him.
"I don’t know why he went in there," Loftin said. "Now I think he was passing out. That’s what I’ve got to think."
As Loftin’s aunt set up the ladder against a bedroom window, Loftin ran back into the hallway to look for Larsen.
"I was yelling, ‘Grandpa, come on!’" Loftin said. His vision was obscured by pitch-black smoke, which was filling the back rooms. Loftin said he could no longer breathe when he finally retreated into the bedroom and shut the door.
Loftin broke out a screen and climbed down the ladder. Police had arrived and took the ladder to the other side of the home, where they climbed up to the burning bedroom and broke the window for ventilation.
But Loftin didn’t want to give up on the man who saved his life. He grabbed a second ladder and propped it under the bedroom window from which he had just escaped. Without extending it, he began to climb.
"An officer grabbed onto my pants to stop me," Loftin said. "I just kept going."
The ladder ended 4 feet below the window. Loftin pulled himself back into the burning home.
He shouted for Larsen as he searched down the hallway. Smoke stopped him halfway.
"I just feel horrible that I didn’t find my grandfather," Loftin said, shaking his head.
Loftin rushed back outside and took a hose around the home to the burning bedroom. He climbed up the ladder police had placed there and aimed the spray through the broken window.
"I was fighting the fire with a garden hose," he said. "I tried."
Firefighters arrived to find much of the second floor burning, said Spanish Fork police Lt. Steve Adams. Lar-sen’s body was later found in the upstairs hallway.
"Because of the grandfather’s acts, going to the second floor, he is a lifesaver," Adams said.
Investigators believe the fire was caused by two overloaded power strips in the bedroom where it started, said city Fire Marshal Joe Jarvis. It caused about $100,000 in damage to the home.
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