3 dead including 5-year-old, at least 3 injured in fire at apartment building on Chicago's West Side
Three people died and at least three others were injured in a large apartment fire in Chicago's Austin neighborhood early Thursday morning.
One of the people who died was a 5-year-old child, and one woman remained unaccounted for late Thursday. The fire has also been deemed suspicious.
The fire started shortly before 2 a.m. in the 5200 block of West North Avenue and was quickly upgraded to a 2-11 alarm. The blaze was eventually upgraded to a 3-11 alarm, calling approximately 140 firefighters to the scene.
"I heard banging on my door. I opened the door, they said the building was on fire. I left out, when I left out, it was engulfed in flames. The Fire Department was running in trying to saw the door down," said resident Ariel Lawrence.
Firefighters used at least eight ladders to bring residents to safety from the flames. At least five people were pulled from the burning building's windows, and others escaped by the stairs or jumped from the building.
"The back porches were gone. We had an emergency alert that nobody could go out the back porch because the porches are down, and then there was a heavy fire in the front stairwell when the battalion pulled up," said Chief Robert Jurewicz.
Fire officials initially reported that four adults and two children were injured in the large blaze. According to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office, three of those victims later died.
The victims who died were a 32-year-old woman, a 76-year-old man, and a 5-year-old boy. The names of the victims who died have not been released.
Fire officials said three people died of their injuries after the fire, two at Stroger Hospital of Cook County and one at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. One of the injured victims was a 4-year-old boy, who one of those taken to Stroger.
One victim is at Loyola Medical Center in grave condition, and another was taken to Stroger Hospital in fair to serious condition.
A Chicago police sergeant was also injured, according to fire officials, but they did not give any details about how he was injured or what his condition is.
The fire is considered to be suspicious, and evidence collected at the scene with the assistance of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been turned over to Chicago police detectives for a criminal investigation. A bullet was seen on the sidewalk outside the apartment building.
The Department of Buildings brought in heavy equipment to assist in the search for people who had been unaccounted for Thursday afternoon, with the hope that they were not in the apartment building when the fire started. In addition to removing the building's roof as part of that search, heavy equipment was also being used to stabilize what remains of the building.
The Fire Department said one woman still remained unaccounted for as of late Thursday. They said they would be back on the scene on Friday, and will be bringing in assets from other states to search for the woman — whom they believe may be in a spot they could not access.
Kenyatta Basemore lived on the third floor, where the fire did the most damage.
"We were asleep, so I jumped up because I started choking," Basemore said, "and you know, I told him I thought someone was breaking in, because of the noise — you know, once you're hearing glass shattering and everything, you automatically assume someone's breaking in."
Basemore said she was rushed out of the building and called the experience "a nightmare."
"I lost my home, so I'm at a loss for words," Basemore said.
Basemore described the horror of the situation.
"Like we came down, and you see people jumping out the window," she said. "There's a baby on the street. He picked the baby up. He was trying to get help for the baby- We just found out now the baby is deceased."
The American Red Cross has been brought in to help the residents, at least 28 of them, who have been displaced.
"I know that there's some health services immediately that we need to take care of in addition to water and breakfast this morning as well," said Red Cross of Illinois Communications Director Connie Esparza. "This is a devastating loss. People are unable to go back into their apartment and gather their things. so we're here to make sure they have a shoulder to lean on and volunteers will make sure they have a plan moving forward."
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
