A mother`s early morning screams awoke many residents in and around a burning apartment building in Vernon Hills on Tuesday.
Efforts to rescue residents from the flames were heroic. A 21-year-old man broke a window and climbed in a first-floor apartment to save three children and their mother, and another resident stood on someone`s shoulders to pull two children from the second floor of an apartment in the Villas by the Lake complex.
But the life-saving efforts weren`t enough to rescue two little girls. Marrietta Bergloff, 2, and her sister, Ashley, 4, according to fire officials, died in apartment No. 4, where the fire apparently began.
”The girls were asleep in their bedroom when I smelled smoke,” said their mother, Michelle Bergloff, 24, who is 4 1/2 months pregnant.
Bergloff`s husband, Don, 27, a truck driver, was at work when the fire broke out at 3:04 a.m. at 805 W. Westmoreland Drive.
”I went to see what the problem was-that would be anybody`s instinct,”
said Bergloff in a choked voice. When she saw the fire in her living room, she ran out into the hallway of the eight-unit building to get the fire extinguisher. When she couldn`t get it to work, she ran back to her two-bedroom apartment.
”The place was in flames. It happened so fast. I couldn`t get in there,” said Bergloff. ”No fire alarm ever went off. There`s no battery in our fire detector.”
”The fire department did the best they could,” she said. ”What else can a mother say? This is something I have to deal with.” Bergloff said she had no idea how the fire started.
Countryside Fire District Chief Lewis Landry said his office, the office of the State Fire Marshal and the Vernon Hills Police Department have not determined the cause or origin of the fire. The Countryside district covers about 25 square miles in the Vernon Hills and Mundelein area.
”Fire was streaming out of the front and the back entrances of the unit,” Landry said. ”The flames were in the hallways, blowing out of the doors and working their way to the second floor.
”The fire spread extremely rapidly” and escalated to a level 2 box alarm at about 3:26 a.m., Landry said. Fire departments from nine communities were summoned.
The building was equipped with smoke detectors, according to Landry, who could not say Tuesday whether the detectors had been functioning properly. Landry also said he was not sure whether the fire extinguisher Michelle Bergloff tried to use was working or not.
More Top Picks Best Prescription Blue Light Glasses
The two-story building had passed an inspection by Vernon Hills fire prevention officers in September, said Larry Smilgius, general manager of Pace Realty Group Inc., which manages the apartments. On Feb. 6, new batteries were put in the four smoke detectors in the main hallways of the building, he said. Bergloff said she didn`t know her children had died in the fire until she arrived at Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, where she was released after being treated for first- and second-degree burns.
Both the Bergloff girls died from smoke inhalation, though they also were badly burned, said Lake County Coroner Barbara Richardson.
When Don Bergloff drove home from work to find his apartment surrounded by firefighters, he instinctively knew his daughters` fate, his wife said.
”He had one of those gut feelings like any father would have,” she said. ”He knew exactly what was wrong; he hadn`t been told.”
Michelle Bergloff said that when she couldn`t get back into her flaming apartment she ran outside and yelled repeatedly for help into the foggy, rainy night.
Joe Olker, a 28-year-old construction worker who lived in the building across from the Bergloff`s, heard her shrill cries.
Olker wasn`t able to save the Bergloff children, but he did manage to help Connie Boyer, 29, and her two children, Bret Boyer, 9, and Amanda Brown, 6 months, who live in the apartment above the Bergloffs. Olker and a neighbor assisted another man and woman from the burning building.
The neighbor stood on Olker`s shoulders to reach the bedroom window. ”He was passing the two kids down and the two women jumped and we caught them,”
Olker said. ”The man also jumped.”
Boyer and others sought refuge at the home of John and Debbie Dubick of 843 Westmoreland Drive, where the couple passed out clothes and blankets.
John Dubick, 21, needed stitches after he broke out the window of a first-floor corner apartment with his elbow in order to rescue a mother and her three children.
”She just sat down on her bed; she panicked,” said Dubick. ”I helped them climb out the bedroom window.
”I wanted to do anything and everything to save those two other children,” he said, but it was too late.