The screams were swallowed by the fire.
Two young brothers, home only because school was canceled for deadly cold, never made it out. Their mother did. Their grandparents did. But Julian, 4, and Jamison, 6, were trapped as an explosion ripped their Missouri home apart. Investigators are still sifting through ruins, the town frozen in grief.
On a bitterly cold Friday in Defiance, Missouri, an ordinary snow day turned into an unthinkable nightmare. Julian and Jamison Keiser should have been in school, complaining about the weather, waiting for recess. Instead, a canceled school day kept them at home, in the path of an explosion that left their house a burning cage. Their mother, Evelyn Turpiano, and grandparents, Jennifer and Vern Ham, stumbled out alive, forced to watch as flames devoured the place where the boys still were.