Father, Two Sons Killed in Fire : Tragedy: Security bars and doors block their escape from their Long Beach apartment. Electrical short suspected as cause of blaze.

Curtis Lyles spent his last seconds of life in a futile struggle to fight through ribbons of fire that filled his Long Beach apartment. First, he tried the locked steel security door, grappling for a key turned white-hot by the flames. Then, clutching his 4-year-old son in his arms, he staggered in a daze through the thick smoke, trying to reach a front window.

It was no use. Neighbors and relatives, pressed back by intense heat and smoke, watched as Lyles stumbled to the floor.

It would take firefighters 15 minutes to work their way through the fire to the pair, and by then both father and son were burned nearly beyond recognition.

In the rear of the apartment, another son, Curtis Jr., was pulled from a bedroom where he had fought in vain to break through a steel grate covering a window. The 7-year-old would become the third victim of the Sunday night fire, dying later at a hospital of smoke inhalation.

On the morning after the fire, relatives, friends and neighbors huddled in groups in the central courtyard of the 18-unit complex near downtown Long Beach, staring at the scorched stucco and boarded-up front window of Lyles’ apartment.

“He was trying to get out of the window,” Annie Hunter, Lyles’ sister, recalled, tears pooling in her eyes. “He was trying to do that and protect his baby at the same time. I guess there was just too much smoke and he couldn’t see.”

Hunter, who resides in an upstairs apartment in the same building, said she was asleep when the fire broke out at about 8 p.m., but was awakened by shouts. She found her own unit filled with smoke from the blaze below. Rushing downstairs, Hunter arrived just in time to watch her brother’s last fleeting efforts to make it to safety.

Friends and family described Lyles, 30, as a gregarious sort, a family man enthralled by his two sons. Curtis Jr. was very much like his father, seemingly always happy and smiling, Hunter said. Jamal, the youngest, had already displayed a love for music and could “sing any song on the radio,” she said.

A custodian at nearby Monroe Elementary School, Lyles was well liked by friends, neighbors and his supervisors.

“This is just such a tragic thing,” said Robert Williams, principal at Monroe Elementary. “He was a good employee, very well liked by students, parents, teachers.”

Long Beach fire officials said the steel window grates and security door represent a difficult paradox in the crime-ridden neighborhood where Lyles lived. Residents treasure the screens, which are ubiquitous throughout the neighborhood, because they represent a barrier against criminals. But the grates pose nothing but problems during fires.

“They’re not illegal, but it’s times like this that we wish they were,” Bob Caldon, a Fire Department spokesman, said Monday. “It’s a (no-win) situation for these people. If they don’t have the grates, they’re subject to theft. If they do, they’re subject to tragedy from fire.”

Security screens cover the rear windows of the apartment building and metal security doors are out front. Although Lyles’ front window was not fitted with a steel security screen, flames nearby posed a barrier to escape, Caldon said.

Grates on the back windows are outfitted with bolts that can be released from inside to allow the security screen to open up, but Curtis Jr. probably was unable to perform the task, authorities speculated.

Lyles’ sister was upset about the security bars. “It just don’t make sense,” Annie Hunter said. “What good is it to have these security screens if people can’t open them and get out? It ain’t fair.”

Investigators believe an electrical short in a lamp set off the fire, which raced along the carpet and shot up the walls.

They also said it appears there was no fire alarm in the apartment unit. Neighbors reported that the building’s owner was careful to put in new battery-operated fire alarms when tenants moved in, but Lyles and his family had been in the building for more than seven years and they may have removed the alarms, Caldon said.

The building owner could not be reached for comment.

Patricia Lyles, the wife and mother of the victims, was out playing bingo when the tragedy occurred, Hunter said.

When she returned home and learned that her family had been killed in the fire, she went into shock and was transported by paramedics to a hospital, Hunter said. She was treated and released, and by Monday was back at the complex, staying with relatives.