Hope Amid Ashes : New Friends Aid Couple Who Lost Son in Holiday Fire

A newly arrived Michigan couple, whose 3-year-old son was fatally injured last week in a fire that started in a Christmas tree, said the tragedy has strengthened their ties to a community that poured forth aid and friendship.

“Everyone’s been so supportive and so helpful,” said Clint Johnson, 30. “So many people we don’t know. It’s amazing.”

In a tearful bedside interview at Holy Cross Medical Center on Wednesday night, parents Clint and Shawn Johnson said they have decided to donate their son’s vital organs to save the lives of others.

“Shawn and Clint both prayed for a miracle,” said her father, Earl Shangle, who flew here with his wife from Grand Rapids, Mich., after the Dec. 30 fire. “They didn’t get their miracle. But they wanted something of Lance to go to another child that needed a miracle.” Sitting up in bed with her bandaged forearms raised over her bed, Shawn Johnson, 27, said, “I suggested it. . . . It’s a way to let him live on in others.”

Shawn Johnson was badly burned when she tried to save Lance, who had sought refuge in a closet after the family’s Sylmar house burst into flames. She was able to get Lance’s older brother, Denton, 4, out of the house, but could not find Lance. Firefighters pulled him from the closet, unconscious and not breathing. They revived the boy, but he died of complications of smoke inhalation four days later at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

It was one of three deaths this holiday season attributed to Christmas tree fires.

On the eve of her release Thursday, Shawn Johnson recounted fractured memories of her harrowing attempt to save Lance, after Denton apparently ignited the tree with a butane fireplace lighter.

The Johnsons had moved to the rented house on Gridley Street on Dec. 22, after Clint was transferred to Los Angeles by his firm, the Knoll Group, which manufactures furniture.

Clint Johnson already had gone to work that morning when the fire began in their 8-foot Christmas tree and, in seconds, engulfed the house.

“I got up and went to the bathroom,” Shawn Johnson said, recalling the moments before the fire. “My oldest son ran in and said, ‘There’s a fire! Fire, Mommy!’ ” She said they ran to the dining room and she grabbed the phone to call 911.

The line went dead as she talked to the operator, she believes because the line was burned as the fire spread. She ran out the sliding glass door with Denton, then returned to the burning house to look for Lance.

“I couldn’t find my other son,” she said. “It was fire over the ceiling, over the floor. I tried to get down on my knees, but I couldn’t get in.”

She suffered first- and second-degree burns on her hands, shoulders and back, but doesn’t remember exactly how.

“I knew I was burned,” she said. “I just didn’t think it was bad.”

The Johnsons are now focusing on helping Denton get through the experience.

“They didn’t want us to ask him questions,” Clint Johnson said. “They want us to answer his questions, to help him understand because he didn’t understand it all, to try to answer his questions as he figures it out himself.”

Clint Johnson said he took Denton to see his brother in the hospital before Lance died Monday “because I didn’t want him not to know where his brother went.”

“He asked, ‘Daddy, why are you crying?’ I said, ‘Because I’m sad for Lance.’ I just explained to him that he was hurt really bad. He looked around the room to see what everybody else’s reaction was. Our hardest time right now is to get him through this.”

Having lived in Los Angeles only eight days at the time of the fire, the family had no friends here. Since the tragedy, however, they have been enfolded in goodwill, they said.

“Our neighbor, Dana--I don’t even know her last name--has been a big help,” Clint Johnson said. “She brought me clothes and food. One other neighbor, Pat, kept our dog. She will keep him as long as needed.”

“He’s quite the ornery dog,” Shawn Johnson added.

In addition to individual offers of help, the Johnsons’ neighbors have set up a fund for them with the assistance of St. Didacus Catholic Church. Checks can be made out to Clint Johnson or the St. Didacus Christian Service, and mailed to the church at 14339 Astoria St., Sylmar 91342, said Father Peter Amy.

The warmth shown by the community has even won over Shawn Johnson’s parents, who were skeptical about the couple’s move West.

“My wife was against them coming out here because they didn’t know anybody,” Earl Shangle said. “All we ever heard was bad things about Los Angeles. We were concerned if something happened, there wouldn’t be anybody for them. Now we feel this is the place for them because they have so many friends.”

Shawn Johnson hopes she has one thing to offer in return: the wisdom of experience.

“There’s one thing I’d like to stress,” she said. “You should sit down with your children and have a fire route and talk about it once a month so they don’t go hide in a closet.” And the Johnsons said they’ll never again celebrate Christmas with an indoor tree.

“We’ll never take that risk again,” Clint Johnson said. “That’s too dangerous.” Shawn Johnson added: “I think we’ll plant one outside and decorate it in memory of Lance.”