SOUTH KITSAP — A grieving Don Simpson of South Kitsap — father, husband and grandfather — was trying to make sense of Saturday morning, Oct. 14.

Awakened by his frantic son Merle, the elder Simpson told reporter Ryan Takeo of KING-TV News that he jumped out of bed, yelled at his wife to get out of the house, and sped to find a pathway out of their burning home on SE Castlewood Drive.

He told Takeo: “I went to find a path, see if the fire was blocking our exit and I went down the stairs. The smoke was heavy. Looked upstairs, yelled at my son. I said, ‘Come on.’ He said, ‘I can’t. I can’t.’”

Assuming his wife of 40 years, Vili, was close behind him, Simpson said he left the house, hoping to catch the grandchildren that had been sleeping in an upstairs bedroom with their father. But no one ever came out alive.

“This is just my assumption that my wife — since I didn’t see her — she was overcome by smoke,” Simpson recounted to the reporter. “Since I heard no crying of the babies, that they were overcome by smoke and then I heard my son’s last breaths.”

Merle and the children, 2-year-old Madison and 1-year-old Collin, were weekend visitors to the Simpson’s home and had shared an upstairs bedroom.

The children’s mother, Victoria Coen, who was separated from their father Merle, told KING-TV News that she was a proud mom. “Collin and Madison were my whole world. I lived for them,” she said while sitting next to her father-in-law for the television interview.

“I just don’t want people to forget them because they were all beautiful and good people.”