Man, 86, Dies in Fire on Eve of Moving : Tragedy: Furnace sets packed box ablaze. Wife is critically injured.

The old couple must have just forgotten.

They had been told by their children not to put boxes on the furnace grate, that it would be dangerous.

But they were both 86 and they would occasionally forget things. It was one of the reasons they were packing up, getting ready to move to farm country, so they could be close to relatives who would look after them.

When Sotero and Aurelia Hurtado went to bed Tuesday night, they left one of their packed boxes on the furnace grate. The alarm sounded at the fire station at 1:38 a.m.

As the firefighters pulled up, the Boyle Heights house was in flames. They found Aurelia in the tiny white stucco duplex. She was not breathing, but they managed to revive her and rush her to County-USC Medical Center.

But Sotero was dead, found crouched in the living room just inside the front door.

In all, it took firefighters just 16 minutes to put out the blaze. The other side of the duplex was not damaged. Firefighters found evidence that the blaze started when a box on the grate ignited.

Wednesday morning, the inside of the Hurtado home was blackened. Piles of cardboard boxes filled with clothes were piled next to the house, as was a burned-out television set. A piece of yellow police tape was strung across the front gate. And Michael Hurtado, a grandson, sifted through the debris, looking for mementos that had not been destroyed by the fire.

“They had been told not to put boxes on the furnace,” he said sadly. “Apparently, they did.”

And as he stood there, with neighbors looking on, he told a story of his grandparents, who had spent much of their lives in the backbreaking world of the migrant worker, who had raised 13 children, and who were about to embark on a new kind of life when the fire struck. They were not being driven out. It’s just that age was creeping up on them.

“This was their home,” he said. “They wanted to stay here.”

But they did not get around as well as they used to and knew they would need someone to look after them. So they bought a triplex in the Tulare County town of Lindsay, just south of Fresno. The plan was for relatives to live in the other apartments so there always would be someone close by. Saturday was to be moving day.

But Michael said one of his aunts had called in the early morning Wednesday to tell his family there had been a fire. He hopped in his Volkswagen bus and drove over.

“We just knew there was a fire,” he said. “We thought both grandparents had made it out.”

Michael learned the truth when he drove up, just as his grandfather’s body was being taken from the house by firefighters.

In the late morning, Michael talked of how his grandparents had emigrated from Mexico more than 60 years ago, of how they had followed the crops up and down the state, of how their many children had been born. He said the couple had settled in Boyle Heights more than 30 years ago.

And he told of how there had been a family reunion last year, of how his grandparents had presided over a gathering of more than 300 people spanning five generations.

“They got a lot of respect from the littlest ones on up,” he said. “They always said that, above all else, live a decent life.”

After being taken to County-USC, Aurelia Hurtado was transferred to Torrance Memorial Medical Center. She was listed in critical condition late Wednesday afternoon. A hospital spokeswoman said she had burns over 20% of her body.