A firefighter catches a girl in midair, but 4 people are killed in a blaze linked to smoking at a South Side high-rise that had been cited for code violations. HUD couldn’t inspect the building last
year due to the government shutdown.
Teetering on an agonizingly short ladder Thursday morning, Chicago firefighter Bill Heenan called up to the sixth floor of the blazing Lake Grove Apartments and tried to calm a hysterical family.
Heenan, just a floor away, yelled: “Help is just 2 minutes away. I’m never going to leave you. I’m going to stay right here and talk to you.”
The moment he glanced away, a child panicked and jumped, landing on the bone-cracking concrete. Seconds later, another child hurled herself out the window of the South Side building, but this time, Heenan stuck out his left arm. Making the greatest catch of his life, he snagged the 80-pound, 8-year-old girl.
“The little girl was screaming, and I only had one arm because I was holding the ladder with the other,” Heenan said later. “She hugged me all the way down the ladder, and then when we got down, she hugged me again.”
Heenan was among the heroes and the little girl was among the survivors of the high-rise fire that probably was started by careless smoking, whipped by high winds and ended up killing four people. Officials said one of the victims jumped to her death.
While Heenan was being praised, residents and governmental officials were questioning the upkeep of the 10-story building at 3555 S. Cottage Grove Ave. Some residents complained that smoke detectors weren’t working when the fire broke out.
The building, run by East Lake Management and Development Corp. and home to about 500 people, had been cited recently for 30 violations of the building or fire codes, including improperly functioning and missing smoke detectors, according to Building Department officials. A Dec. 27 investigation found that some fire extinguishers weren’t working or in place.
The fire occurred just a day before East Lake Management was scheduled to appear in Housing Court to see if the problems had been rectified. With the impending court hearing, a city inspector had been scheduled to visit the building Thursday.
Because the building has some federally subsidized units, the Department of Housing and Urban Development also had inspected it. HUD had scheduled inspections on Nov. 13 and Dec. 18 to follow up on repair orders But both visits were canceled because of the government shutdown.
HUD had cited health and safety violations as far back as September 1994.
Department Secretary Henry Cisneros, commenting on the fatal fire, criticized the government shutdown, saying inspections “may seem innocuous and unimportant until we understand that unsafe conditions can cost lives.”
The building was erected in 1972, three years before fire ordinances requiring sprinkler and alarm systems in high-rises went into effect.
“Sprinklers might have confined it,” said Fire Commissioner Ray Orozco. “The fire was so intense that we had white fire coming out of the north side of the building. That tells you the temperature of the fire is over 1,500 degrees. It’s very unusual for a fire to literally destroy a one-hour fire wall in 15 minutes.”
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Elzie Higginbottom, chairman of East Lake Management, said he, too, heard complaints Thursday from residents that smoke detectors had not sounded.
“They are battery-operated units–someone could have taken batteries out,” he said. “They could have been vandalized.”
Dorothy Ford, who lived on the eighth floor with her boyfriend and two children, was among those who said they never heard the smoke detectors.
“Our smoke detector didn’t work,” said Ford, 27, who was treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation and released. “I know the batteries were good. Our whole apartment was full of black smoke. You couldn’t even see the kids.”
Another resident, Louis Warnell, 24, said his family installed a smoke detector in the apartment because the one put there by the management didn’t work.
“This whole thing doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “About four years ago, they installed an alarm system, but after a year, they cut it off because kids across the street kept pulling the alarm. It ain’t been on since.”
The four people who died included 46-year-old Yvette Foster, who jumped from a window. The others, 20-year-old Dana Smith, 42-year-old Yvonne Allen and 10-year-old Wayne Allen were found on the fifth and seventh floors.
Foster’s 18-year-old daughter, Ladonna, was in intensive care at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. More than 50 other people were taken to 13 area hospitals, with fewer than a dozen still hospitalized as of Thursday night.
Orozco said the fire started in the fifth-floor apartment of a heavy smoker on the south side of the building. The occupant was walking out of the washroom and saw a fire by a walk-in closet, according to the fire commissioner. The resident ran past the fire and left the door open, allowing the fire to spread through the building, Orozco said.
The closet was filled with a couple of tires, a rolled up mattress and film, Orozco said. “This is fuel that is not normally in an apartment.”
Gusty winds of more than 30 m.p.h. spread the fire quickly throughout the building. Steel beams buckled, and when firefighters arrived, dozens of people were hanging out their windows screaming for help.
“There were metal studs on the interior walls that have been bent from the intensity of the heat,” Orozco said.
More than 120 firefighters fought for 90 minutes to control the blaze, which began at about 3:30 a.m. Rescuers carried about 60 people down a dozen ladders lined up along the north side of the building.
“I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before,” Heenan said, “and probably never will again. I’m just happy I was able to help that little girl.”
In addition to praising nine-year veteran Heenan for his efforts, Orozco singled out firefighter Brian Rafferty, who caught a baby while on an aerial ladder 95 feet in the air. A mother had dropped the baby from about 10 feet away into Rafferty’s arms.
In all, Rafferty and his partner rescued about 10 people, Orozco said.
Many people escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs. At Mitchell Hospital, 16-month-old Darrian Colman, nicknamed “Munch,” toddled around wearing a nightshirt soiled during the fire.
She and her siblings–Keila Colman, 11, and Fredrick Collins, 10–were lowered to safety from their smoke-filled ninth-floor apartment. The children were waiting at the hospital for their mother, 31-year-old Dwana Colman, who suffers from asthma and was treated for smoke inhalation.
“It was scary,” said Fredrick, who smelled of smoke. “Everything was real black, and I started crying. I thought we would all die.”
Also damaged in the fire was a preschool, Headstart Day Care Center, which was located on the first floor of the building. Jesse Madison, president of the Abraham Lincoln Center, which runs the school, said the school would likely be closed for two to three weeks.
Day-care workers said their alarm system went off and was so loud that it alerted some of the residents in the building.
“We’re required by law to have it,” said employee Mary Smith of the alarm system. “Now, we’re worried about losing stuff to looters. Once the building is vacant, it’s open field. We’ve moved computers, but there’s plenty of other toys and stuff we need to lock away.”