Nancy Clay, a 31-year-old production manager, died last month in a fire of undetermined origin while working overnight on a project for her firm on the 20th floor of One Illinois Center, a high-rise office building in downtown Chicago.
Her death on May 13 was one of 58 fire-related deaths that have occurred in Chicago this year.
But more than the other deaths, the tragedy involving Nancy Clay has called into question the procedures, policies and effectiveness of the Chicago Fire Department and has raised challenges to the capabilities of the city`s emergency 911 telephone system, a lifeline for those who call the number more than 3 million times each year.
One specific question is: Did the Chicago firefighters who arrived at the scene about 3 a.m. on May 13, shortly after Clay`s initial call to 911, know there was a woman trapped on the burning 20th floor?
A broader question raised is this: Is the city`s 911 emergency telephone system adequate to ensure the safety of the city`s 3 million residents and the thousands of suburban residents who come to downtow Both questions undoubtedly will be asked countless times over the next several months as lawsuits wind through the intricacies of the court system.
The blaze at One Illinois Center was one of those fires in which, it seemed, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. There was confusion over the woman`s location or even if there was a person on the floor; firefighters became stuck in a stubborn elevator on their way up to the fire; and, once on the floor, they were confronted with a maze of small offices and heavy billows of superheated smoke.
The story of the death of Nancy Clay has become a Page One, top-of-the-television news story because of the drama of the 911 tape-recorded conversations between Clay and a $583-a-week civilian fire dispatcher aide
–tapes played for the news media by Robert Clifford, an attorney hired by the woman`s parents.
In contrast, just nine days after Clay`s death, five children and two adults were fatally injured in an early-morning blaze in a basement apartment at 245 W. Scott St., an event that received fairly routine news coverage the day it happened, but, absent dramatic tape recordings and the urban nightmare of a high-rise fire, did not get continuing high-profile coverage.
The larger question of the effectiveness of the 911 emergency communications system, a decade-old operation that has been the recurring source of controversy since its introduction, comes just weeks after an outside study group, commissioned by the Chicago Fire Department, found that fire department dispatchers were understaffed and overworked compared with their counterparts in New York and Los Angeles, two larger cities with similar emergency problems.
Most of the story to date has been told through police tapes, Clifford`s statements, the statements of the girl`s father, William Clay–who talked by telephone with his daughter after she initially reported the fire–and two dramatic tape recordings between Nancy Clay and the fire dispatcher.
In addition, there is another tape recording in the possession of WGN-AM radio, in which the girl`s father has an on-the-air discussion with a WGN announcer and news reporters telling of her presence in the building and asking for additional information on the fire`s progress.
The dispatcher, in a remarkably placid voice, exchanged questions and answers with the woman about the location of the fire and assured her that help was on the way.
Jerry Lawrence, a fire department spokesman, has repeatedly turned away specific questions about the One Illinois Center fire, clearly anticipating an eventual lawsuit, though Clifford, who has retained a public relations adviser to coordinate media coverage of his case, so far has filed suit only against Metropolitan Management Co., the building management firm for the center, at 111 E. Wacker Dr.
The official silence has not extended to the city`s politicians, and several aldermen have jumped into the controversy with demands for hearings, changes and investigations.
At the Chicago City Council session on Friday, Ald. Michael Sheahan
(19th), a former Chicago police officer, plans to introduce a resolution asking the fire department to establish a separate emergency number, such as 912, and Ald. Bobby Rush (2d) has promised to introduce a resolution abolishing so-called ”vanity addresses,” such as the One Illinois Center name, coined by the developers of the 111 E. Wacker Dr. building where Clay died.
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Ald. William Beavers (7th), chairman of the council Police and Fire Committee, has urged that the civilian dispatchers be replaced with sworn firefighters, a demand repeated by Clifford on Thursday. And Ald. Edward Burke (14th), another former police officer, has described the entire handling of the fire as ”horrendous, almost nauseating.”
Under the current 911 system, an emergency call is first received by an operator at the Police Department at 1121 S. State St. If the operator determines that the call is a fire or medical emergency, it is immediately fast-forwarded to either the fire department north communications center in City Hall or the south center at 6355 S. Wentworth Ave. The police
communications center has a computerized address locater system; the fire centers do not.
It`s not clear, though, that either the so-called ”vanity address” or the civilian status of the dispatcher had anything to do with Clay`s death. Clay reported the fire at 3:01:50 a.m., and within seconds, the dispatcher had determined that One Illinois Center was at 111 E. Wacker Dr., according to unofficial transcripts.
Also an official ”ruling” by the council on Rush`s proposal presumably could be ignored by the owners of such buildings. They could continue to use their own designated address on stationery and official documents, if the U.S. Postal Service continues to recognize ”vanity addresses.”
The next question has yet to be answered: When did firefighters dispatched to the scene know that there was a woman trapped on the 20th floor? A police officer sent to the scene at 3:04 a.m. by a police dispatcher was aware that Clay was trapped on the 20th floor. The officer, Raymond Sloma, of the Central District, said he passed along the information to firefighters who were battling their way to the 20th floor.
”I gave the information about the woman to the firemen. They are trying to find her,” Sloma told another, unidentified officer during a radio conversation that occurred about 3:20 a.m.
Also left to be resolved is the question about the elevators.
Shortly after the One Illinois Center fire, it was reported that several firefighters en route by elevator to the burning floor escaped near certain death by holding the elevators closed when the elevator inexplicably stopped at the 20th floor, rather than open floors lower, a standard fire department procedure.
But, a fire department report a day later showed the elevator was operating properly, raising the possibility of human error in the elevator operation.
That question and others are under fire department investigation.
”It is unfortunate, but, from what the firemen tell me, short of a miracle from God, Nancy Clay could not have been saved even with superhuman efforts by firemen,” said Lawrence, the fire department spokesman, after another court hearing Thursday on Clifford`s suit.
The suit and the council debates undoubtedly will produce thousands of words but none probably as eloquent as those final words uttered by a young woman trapped on the 20th floor of a burning high-rise office building, who told an anonymous voice on the other end of the emergency telephone lifeline: ”Somebody`s got to find me before I die. Hurry!”