FORT COLLINS, Colo. (KDVR) — It was just after midnight on Valentine’s Day when Andrea Keever heard the screams from her living room.
“All of a sudden, I heard a whooshing sound, and he yelled, ‘Help me, I’m on fire,'” she said.
‘I thought for sure we were both dead’
Turning the corner at her Brookview Apartments home, Keever said she saw her husband and a portion of his oxygen tank on fire.
“His leg was on fire, his shoulder was on fire,” she said. “I threw water on him. I threw water on the couch. At that point, I looked up, and behind the couch was a wall of flame, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get it out.”
Keever said she called 911, unhooked him from his oxygen and dragged him to their second-story balcony.
“I don’t know how I got him to the front door, but I did,” she said. “I thought for sure after that second lung full of smoke, I thought for sure we were both dead.”
Long recovery ahead after destructive fire
Keever said both of them were taken to the hospital, and her husband has since been transferred to the burn intensive care unit at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora.
“He’s got third-degree burns over 12% of his body, and he’s going into surgery tomorrow for skin grafts on his back,” she said.
A dog they were fostering for a friend did not follow them to the door and passed away in the fire.
Keever is still not sure what started the fire but said she’s sorry to the other families displaced.
“I could not feel worse, and I want to apologize to everybody that I displaced,” she said.
A fundraiser has been set up to help the Keevers with medical bills and to replace items lost in the fire.
“Everything that I owned was in that house,” she said.