NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. -- John Kurtz kneels by a wood-burning water heater in his basement, a jug of kerosene in hand.

He shoves scraps of wood through a hatch on the bottom and adds a few splashes of the oily, clear liquid.

He steps back and watches after the cigarette lighter he held near the wood creates a slow, smooth flame.

This is how kerosene burns.

This is not how it burned for John's daughter, Ada, in June, when the same routine, which she repeated almost daily for years on her Amish family's Mercer County farm, yielded not a flame but a fire. It caught hold of her polyester dress and wouldn't let go as she ran outside toward her husband's workshop, where Simon Kurtz begged her to hold still.

By the time it loosened its grip, the fire had scorched nearly 70 percent of Ada's body.

This is how gasoline burns.

Since her death two weeks later, Simon Kurtz has been tormented by questions about how gasoline got into the blue jug, the one clearly marked "kerosene," which he filled weeks earlier at a New Wilmington station. New Wilmington Fire Chief Gary Wagner pointed to human error after the blaze, saying someone must have put gasoline in the wrong container.

But Ada's relatives, insisting that wasn't the case, have renewed hope for answers about her death after a Coraopolis company's massive recall this week of kerosene that may have been contaminated by gasoline.

It is unknown whether Ada's death and the contamination at Pittsburgh Terminals in Coraopolis are connected, though the company said last week that it was investigating that possibility. The company asked that all kerosene purchased since May 1 be returned.

Simon Kurtz doesn't want money. He doesn't want a lawyer.

He wants answers.

"I'm not bad-mouthing anyone," Simon, 26, said yesterday, sitting with Ada's mother, father, cousin and friends inside the cozy home where she grew up. "We're all humans, we all make mistakes. I just hope they do something about this so it doesn't happen to anyone else."

Ada's relatives spoke about her death yesterday in response to the kerosene recall, but declined to be photographed, citing religious and personal reasons.

Like most Amish without electricity, Ada's family buys kerosene for lighting and cooking. Gasoline powers other necessities.

"Kerosene is just part of our lives," Simon said.

Ada, 25, had been using kerosene to heat water for washing clothes or cooking since she was 16 or 17, and had been filling oil lamps with it since she was even younger. On June 14, she used it to heat bath water for her children -- John, 2, and Laura, 1.

Ada knew how to use kerosene, her husband said, which makes her death more difficult for him to grasp.

"You buy a blue jug that's for kerosene, you buy a red jug that's for gasoline," he said. "It's not like she didn't know the difference."

Simon said he is always careful with combustibles. He said he did not knowingly put gasoline in the blue kerosene jug, or vice versa, a switch, firefighters said, that likely led to his wife's death.

"It's upsetting to me that they would blame it on my son-in-law," John Kurtz said. "It's just very frustrating the way it was handled."

The accident has made Ada's family vigilant about their kerosene use. Her father steps back a bit after he lights the wood-burner and finds himself sniffing the air for the distinct, sharp smell of gasoline.

"But who would have thought, buying it for years, you'd be having to smell it?" he said.

With his children and his parents, Simon still lives in the modest home he shared with Ada. His son, John, bounds around the front yard, giggling and attempting somersaults. He knows his mother's missing, Simon said, but he's still too young to understand why.

With daughter Laura perched in his arm, nuzzling his neck, Simon moves through his tidy home, which was left dirty but not heavily damaged by the blaze and its billowing, black smoke. A good scrubbing of the basement walls hid most traces of the tragedy, save for a few charred door frames.

A commemorative plate hanging in the living room marks Simon and Ada's wedding five-and-a-half years ago. The pair met the way many Amish couples do, Simon said, during Sunday night socials, when teenagers gather at each other's homes, to sing and catch up.

Simon was drawn to Ada's natural warmth, which made her a good listener throughout childhood and a good mother later in life. She liked to clean and tend to the house. She quilted and baked bread, pies and cookies.

"She was just so patient," Simon said, tears running down his ruddy cheeks. "I really miss her."

Aside from the daytime, when Simon worked construction jobs and Ada looked after the children, the two were always together. And Simon was by Ada's side up to the end, when she lay in a hospital bed at UPMC Mercy for two weeks, unable to talk or tell him what happened at the wood-burner.

Just once, Simon said, she managed to whisper.

"She said she hoped no one would ever have to go through what she went through."