A fallen fire chief who saved his own children from a burning house was honored in Albany Tuesday afternoon.
William V. Lattrell died in 1953 after an explosion and subsequent fire destroyed his family's home on Church Street.
Granddaughter Jodi Lattrell Burns said that, while her grandmother Catherine and seven of the family's eight children slept, William went to the basement of their home in the early morning to light the hot water heater's pilot light.
"It exploded," she said. "There was something wrong with it. He didn't know that."
The explosion was enough to throw William backwards, knock some of his children out of their upstairs beds, spark multiple fires and alert neighbors.