KENAI -- How can it be that one night a guy's watching cartoons with his wife and kids, reading bedtime stories and tucking the little ones in for the night, and the next morning he's the only one still alive?

Frank Hunt, Jr., 26, and his wife, Christina, 31, woke up on a Saturday morning one month ago choking on heavy smoke, flames racing through their trailer so fast, they were almost out of options by the time they stumbled out of bed.

With only seconds to make a plan, they agreed Christina would grab their 7-year-old and climb out the bedroom window, while Frank raced to get the other two kids sleeping at the opposite end of the trailer.

"So I ran, hit a wall of flames," he said. "I couldn't see nothing."

Moments later, he was barefoot and dazed in the snow as his whole life burned up in front of him.

The Hunt family included Christina's 13-year-old daughter, Judy Jones, and two sons they had together, Frankie, 7, and Ryan, 4.

Theirs was a close-knit, Christian family, with grandmas and grandpas, aunts, uncles and cousins nearby. Friday nights were important in the Hunt household.

"That was family time," said Frank, who works for a janitorial service. "Every Friday. No phones. We'd just turn them off. Nothing else could interfere."

Whatever the kids wanted to do is what they did. On one of those family nights, the boys wanted to go camping -- in the wilds of their backyard.

"We set up the tent, and I said, 'Now, if we can make it through the night, OK. If not, the house is right here, guys.' About midnight they said, 'Umm, dad, can we go in?' I said, 'Sure, let's go in.' " So they finished their camping trip with the tent set up in the middle of the living room.

The fire started the morning after one of those family nights, one that began with stops at McDonald's, Carl's Jr., Arby's and a Chinese take-out counter because everyone wanted something different, which on Fridays was just fine.

After dinner, Frank put on "Bee Movie" and they sat down to watch, munching popcorn, chips, grapes and fruit. Then came storybooks, baths and pajamas.

Frankie and Ryan asked if they could sleep in the living room. "Most definitely," their dad said. So he hauled out a mattress and set them up. The boys fell asleep watching cartoons.

"Then Judy goes, 'Well, dad, I'm going to bed.' "

Frank and Christina switched to the Discovery Channel and watched until about 11:30, when Christina called it a night.

"I locked the door," Frank said, "checked the stove, turned off all the lights except for the one above the stove that I always leave on ... so the kids can make it to the bathroom. And I went to bed."

Frank woke up about 5:30 a.m. to use the john and let the dog out. He noticed little Frankie had crawled into bed with them.

"Ryan was still laying on the mattress, so I covered him back up. And then I went right back to bed and went to sleep.

"And then ... then ... then ... my son, Frank, hit me in the face and said, 'Dad, there's smoke.'

THE KIDS!

There was something strange about Frankie's voice.

"His voice ...

"It was muffled. Like if you're underwater holding your breath and you come up and uuuuuuuuuh.

"He told me after he woke me up, 'I screamed and pushed you and you wouldn't wake up, so I hit you, Dad!' "

Frank had trouble waking Christina, too. The smoke had already started strangling them. And then ...

The kids!

Grab Frankie, he told Christina, and get out the bedroom window. He took off down the hall for Ryan and Judy.

Flames stopped him in the kitchen. Blinded by thick black smoke, he turned and felt his way to the bathroom and nearly fell in the tub. He broke out the bathroom window and dove into the snow. He'd get to the kids through the front door.

"I ran to the front door, which was a metal door, and it was locked, of course. So I started kicking it in and it wasn't budging. And I remembered I had an extra key in the Jeep. So I grabbed the first key I see, stuck it in. It was for the back door."

Meanwhile, Mark Tuter and Dan Adams were headed down the Kenai Spur Highway on their way to a shooting range when they saw smoke. By the time they pulled up, it was pouring from the edges and roof of the trailer.

They dialed 911. Tuter saw Frank by the front door, barefoot, wearing only boxers, fumbling with the key.

"He was in kind of a stupor," Tuter said. " I think he just sucked a lot of smoke."

Adams kicked in the door. But it was just the entryway, and it was filled with black smoke. There was no going any farther.

Inside, a child screamed.

Frank and Adams got down on their knees and shouted into the blackness: "Get down and crawl! Get down and crawl!"

"I can't, I can't!"

Adams ran to a window and yanked it off its hinges.

"Black smoke just came billowing out," Tuter said. "It just looked like a locomotive. Smoke was shooting out of everything.

"Then it got real quiet."

Frank couldn't believe what was happening, Tuter said.

"I mean, he's just really, really in shock."

His face sooty, his hair singed, his foot bruised from kicking the door, he had cuts and scrapes from diving through the window and minor burns across his shoulder and chest.

Frank stumbled to the other end of the trailer, where he assumed Christina and Frankie would be waiting for him outside the bedroom window.

But no one was there.

All he could hear was the roar of flames.

GOD'S PLAN

Firefighters arrived within seven minutes. As they pulled up, Kenai Fire Chief Mike Tilly said, flames were shooting out of every window.

"I'll tell ya, there was very, very little time," Tilly said of Frank's attempt to save his family. "And he very well could have been dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning."

Wrapped in a blanket, Frank was led to a squad car and taken to the Kenai police station for questioning.

"They asked me if they could do a chemical test on my hands (for accelerants)," Frank said. "They asked me if I'd mind doing a drug screen, and I said, 'Hand me a cup, take blood, whatever you want.' And they said, 'Will you take a polygraph test if we ask?' And I said, 'Yes, I'll do it right now.'

That's the way it has to be when someone dies in a fire, Tilly explained. Investigators and the medical examiner have to determine if it was an accident or a crime.

"I was crying, angry, confused," Frank said. "I was coughing up black stuff for about three or four hours. And I was blowing my nose, black stuff was coming out."

Investigators determined the fire started in the living room, but the exact cause remains unknown, Tilly said. Smoke inhalation killed the family.

The family dog and pet finches died too. Frank is lucky he made it out alive, Tilly says.

Lucky is not how Frank feels.

God must have taken his family for a reason, he says. And he must have been spared for a reason, too. He just doesn't have a clue what that reason could possibly be.

"He'll tell me that reason when it's time," he says.

Meanwhile, tranquilizers help him make it through the days, sleeping pills, the nights.

CRITICISM AND SUPPORT

In the days after the fire, as Frank tried to get his mind around what had happened, strangers who read about it or saw reports on television assumed the only thing he tried to save that morning was his own skin.

With the fire under investigation, officials followed their normal practice of releasing little information. All they would say was he'd escaped through a window, was outside when firefighters arrived and was not injured.

Armchair critics were happy to fill in the blanks, speculating in grocery stores and bars, in postings on the ADN Web site:

"No attempt to save even one child?"

"The father should be locked away."

"... if he doesn't look like Freddy Krueger right now, he didn't do enough."

Because it was too painful for him to speak at the time, Frank's grand-uncle, George "Bubba" Hunt, tried to set the story straight with a letter to newspapers and television stations.

"They didn't tell a lie; they just didn't tell all of it," he said.

Christina's parents, Joyce and Paul Drake, also wrote a letter to the Peninsula Clarion in Frank's defense:

"We believe with all our being he did everything he could possibly do to get his family out of their burning trailer ... We would ask that those who are making hurtful, untrue statements, please stop. You cannot imagine the pain we are suffering, and to hear ignorant rumors simply adds to our sorrow."

Frank is living with his father, Frank Sr., now. He's yet to return to work. His boss has told him to take all the time he needs.

He's on medications and getting counseling, his father said. The only plan he has for sure is to spend more time with his 12-year-old stepson, Dolan Drake, who lives out of state with his father. The tragedy has brought them closer.

The trailer site is right along the main route between Soldotna and Kenai. Frank and his father have been taking back roads to avoid it. The skeletal remains of Frank's home have been hauled away, the yard where his kids and dog once played now worked over by a bulldozer.

All that remains are wads of charred insulation, tangles of wire and septic vents poking from bare ground. A dog leash, a little ball, a single yellow Lego. Pages of books, burned around the edges, including a Bible.

Aside from strangers who passed judgment, the community has been incredibly supportive, Frank's relatives say. In many, many ways. The memorial service was standing-room-only. And a rule got bent so Christina and her three children could be together in the same urn.

"Usually the city only allows three, but they made an exception," Frank's father said.

Frank's boss, Tim Wisniewski, had promised the boys he'd take them for a ride in his 1956 Chevy. He kept that promise.

He carried the family's ashes in the vintage station wagon to the Kenai City Cemetery where they're buried, where Frank visits them nearly every day, to talk to them, to pray.