Kirk Montgomery Rohle attempted to rescue Benjamin T. Rogers from burning, Hampden Sydney, Virginia, January 25, 2012. Rogers, 21, and Rohle, 22, students at the same college and residents of the same two-story house, were asleep on the second floor after fire erupted before dawn in a porch attached to the first floor. Alerted, Rohle and all the other residents except Rogers fled the house through its back door to safety and then realized that Rogers remained inside. Wearing only shorts, Rohle re-entered the burning house, moving quickly through dense smoke on the first floor and ascending the stairs to the second. Although smoke there precluded visibility, Rohle checked the bedrooms on that floor, finding that part of the flooring by then had collapsed to expose the fire in the living room. Disoriented by the smoke and blistering heat, Rohle felt his way back to the stairs and down to the first floor, losing his footing at one point. With flames by then blocking access to both of the house’s doors, Rohle made his way into a first-floor bedroom, where he threw himself through a window to the ground. Rogers, who at some point had made his way to safety, sustained second-degree burns, for which he was hospitalized two days. He recovered. Rohle sustained burns of up to third-degree to about 50 percent of his body and inhalation injury. He required extensive hospitalization for treatment, including skin grafting.
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