A father was badly burned trying to rescue his 1-year-old son Wednesday night after their home in Marmet caught fire.
Chris Lightfoot and his son were both still hospitalized Thursday evening, said Shannon Snodgrass, a firefighter in Marmet. Lightfoot was in a burn unit at the University of Kentucky and the child is in the pediatric intensive care unit at Charleston Area Medical Center's Women and Children's hospital.
"The father was trying to get to his son when firefighters got to the scene," said C.W. Sigman, director of emergency services in Kanawha County. "He got burned trying to save his son, and that speaks well for the man."
The condition of the 1-year-old is improving, Snodgrass said Thursday afternoon.
The child was in a bedroom on the second floor of the home. After firefighters put out the flames, they were able to reach the boy, Snodgrass said.
"We were able to locate the child and get the child out, and luckily the child was still breathing," she said.
When Sigman arrived at the two-story home on Maryland Avenue, he could hear a smoke detector inside the house sounding and saw a fire extinguisher on the ground that Lightfood had attempted to use. The fire was reported to Kanawha Metro 911 dispatchers at about 11:15 p.m.
The father "tried to use it but this fire was too big for an extinguisher to handle," Sigman said.
The fire was pretty much contained in the living room of the older home, according to Sigman, but most of the contents throughout the rest of the home were ruined by smoke.
According to a GoFundMe campaign, the family, which also includes Lightfoot's wife, Danielle Borek and three other children, has lost everything. One of the family's dogs died in the fire, according to the information on the fund's Web page, which says it was created by a family friend.
In four hours, 19 people had raised about $1,300.
Sigman said he received information that some family members in the house were making s'mores in the living room's fireplace, The fire is thought to have started when something hot touched a piece of furniture, according to Sigman.
"The stuff economical furniture is made of now are hydrocarbons and put out a lot of smoke. It's like having a tire burning in your home," Sigman said. "If your couch catches on fire, it's a rip-roaring fire in usually just about three minutes or so."
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.