Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(TNS)
Feb. 24—Two adults and a toddler died in a massive house fire early Monday in Kittanning while two young boys and the family living on the other side of the duplex escaped.
The Armstrong County Coroner identified the adults as Kayla Whittaker, 28, her 3-year-old son, Ryland Whittaker, and 26-year-old Jason C. Blystone Jr.
Neighbors said two of Ms. Whittaker's children, ages 9 and 5, made it out of the house and alerted neighbors to the blaze.
"Little superheroes," one neighbor called them.
The woman, who lives two doors down from the duplex and asked not to be identified by name, said she awoke before dawn to one of her neighbors shouting. She said she walked outside to a cloud of smoke and the two boys in the street. The children had already called 911.
She said the home on North Grant Avenue was quickly engulfed, and she pulled the two children inside her own home. They colored and played with Legos, she said, and she tried to distract them from the horror two doors down.
"Let them be kids because I know starting the moment they left here childhood's gone," she said.
She also had the heavy task of calling the boys' father, who she said has been out of town, to tell him that the home was on fire.
"I told him the boys are here, they're safe, they ate breakfast, and they were kids for a few hours before adult life had to kick in," she said.
She said the boys didn't once ask about their toys or their Xbox — just when they could go home and when their mother was coming to get them.
"That house went up so fast. For [the boys] to run out of their home, into the neighbor's home to beg for them to come outside, to run down here and make sure we're OK — I mean, they're 9 and 5," she said.
She said she believes the boys saved their neighbors in the duplex.
Janet Kasprack is one of those neighbors in the duplex. She told Post-Gazette news partner KDKA-TV that she awoke to one of the boys knocking on her door. She said the boy told her that his steps were on fire. Ms. Kasprack said what started as a little fire on the steps "spread like crazy."
Ms. Kasprack told the TV station she ran back inside to help her husband, who uses a wheelchair, out of the house.
"We got him out to the porch and [police and paramedics] just grabbed him out of his power wheelchair and put him on a stretcher," she said. "And then got his wheelchair off the porch."
Scott Kline, chief of Kittanning Hose Company 6, told KDKA the first started near the rear of one side of the duplex and spread from there. He said two firefighters were injured when they fell through the second floor. They were treated at Armstrong County Memorial Hospital.
"It's a deep tragedy, especially for a small community," the chief said. "There's times you drive past and see there's kids playing in the street. It's only probably about six houses from my house."
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