As firefighters pulled their trucks to a halt outside 135 S. LaSalle St. Monday night, smoke was already spreading into the stairwells as flames surged through a 29th-floor office.
Almost immediately, commanders made what proved to be one of many crucial decisions of the night. Rather than fight the fire from two stairwells, they would only attack it from one, giving the fire a head start but keeping a path for the building’s workers to escape.
The move slowed the Fire Department’s ability to fight the flames and lengthened the time it took to extinguish the fire–5 1/2 hours in all. But on Tuesday, city officials said it also might have saved lives.
“We were doing what is commonly known as `defending in place,'” said Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter. “We wanted to contain the fire until we could make sure everybody was out of the building.”
One day after the blaze, fire officials and workers who fled reviewed the decisions–large and small–that many believe kept the ornery flames from becoming lethal.
The fire sent 39 people, including 24 firefighters, to hospitals. Five of the firefighters remained hospitalized Tuesday night.
But the fact that no one died led city officials to praise the Fire Department’s response as a rousing success.
As investigators scoured the scene at the LaSalle Bank building Tuesday, the Fire Department still did not know what caused the blaze.
In a news conference at City Hall, Trotter said his employees did an exemplary job.
Others said the department’s new high-rise battle plan–forged amid harsh criticism following the Oct. 17, 2003, Cook County Administration building fire that killed six–worked perfectly.
“Our stepped-up training helped us immensely,” said 1st District Chief Bob Hoff, who helped fight the fire Monday night. “We were disciplined, and we knew where to go and what to do.”
City officials said firefighters arrived at the 45-story building at 6:32 p.m. Monday and immediately took over the building’s public-address system. They began making intermittent announcements assuring workers that rescuers were on the way.
Several firefighters said the lobby at the time was crystal clear, but flames would soon be seen bursting from the 29th-floor windows.
The east stairwell was established for evacuations, and the west stairwell was reserved for fire fighting.
One of the first firefighters on the scene, Capt. Lynda Turner, said she arrived at the 29th floor just minutes after the first 911 calls.
Blaze got there 1st
Turner said she opened the door into the 29th floor and trained her thermal imaging camera on the hallway’s ceiling. The device told her that the blaze, which had started in an adjacent office, had already snaked into the space above the drop ceiling.
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With the first blast of water, flames rolled down. Turner and her fellow firefighters retreated hastily to the safety of the west stairwell and pulled their firehose through the door.
The heat was so intense it had burned the hose beyond repair.
About the same time, dozens of firefighters searched stairwells and floors throughout the building, helping workers evacuate.
To avoid communications jams that plagued the fire a year ago, some firefighters simply picked up the phones in the stairwells to call colleagues in the building’s lobby.
Workers who called 911 were told to stay put and remain on the line until firefighters arrived to escort them to safety. That decision, based on new Fire Department and dispatcher protocol, was radically different from the response to the deadly fire last year on Washington Street. There, the six victims were not found until roughly 90 minutes after firefighters arrived.
The new protocol required a much larger number of Fire Department personnel: Trotter said about 450 department members responded to the blaze.
Suburbs helped out
The huge response meant the Fire Department had to call on suburban fire departments to help staff-depleted stations throughout the city.
It also slowed firefighters’ ability to battle the fire, because fire commanders waited to utilize the east stairwell until all building workers were out.
Hoff said search-and-rescue teams did three sweeps of the building before commanders decided it was clear and safe to use both stairwells in their attack on the blaze.
Mark Ghilarducci, who led a state-funded investigation into the Washington Street fire, said the decision was a good one.
“That’s a tremendous improvement and a great strategy,” compared to 69 W. Washington, Ghilarducci said. “Clearly they learned.”
Other decisions were made in split-second time. As she battled the blaze with co-workers from the west stairwell on 29, Turner decided to briefly back off.
“We didn’t want to get trapped in a ball of fire,” she said. “I told my people to retreat back.”
The team had to hook up a second hose to replace the burned one. On their second attack, they were able to knock down the flames and punch a hole in the wall to the office where the fire originated.
Through the hole, Turner and her team poured water on the flames, slowing their spread.
At roughly the same time, workers in the building were trying to find their way to safety through thick smoke.
Mary Laraia, senior vice president for development at LaSalle Bank, remembers grabbing her coat and heading to the stairwell from her 40th-floor office.
She made it eight floors down.
“It was getting really, really thick, and we didn’t know what was below us,” Laraia said. “It could have been one more flight of smoke or 20 more flights, and we might not be able to get back up.”
Laraia said she peeked into the 32nd-floor hallway and saw it was relatively clear. She and 11 others in the stairwell went inside, placing tissues and T-shirts in the opening below the stairwell door to keep the smoke out.
The 12 people then called the Fire Department for help. About five minutes later, as smoke began leaking around the door and through the ventilation, a voice on the public-address system told them firefighters were on the way.
Fifteen minutes after that, help arrived.
“The fireman burst in through the door and asked if we were the 12 people on 32,” Laraia said. The firefighter then led the group down the stairs.
“We all were nervous,” said Laraia, who thought about going back up. “I know the thought went through our minds, especially when we hit total blackness. But the fireman’s voice was very clear. They were coaching us.”
Ken Perlman, too, waited for assistance from a firefighter before evacuating the building. Perlman, who works in a law office on the 39th floor, said he headed down with co-workers after smelling smoke in his office. He stopped at the 33rd floor and called his wife, who called 911.
Perlman said it took firefighters about 45 minutes to reach him. Perlman said he and others on the floor were told they would have to brave the smoke-filled stairwell for about four or five flights, but then things would clear.
When Perlman entered the stairwell, the smoke was too thick to see. He made it down by grabbing the belt of the man in front of him, he said.
“It’s not that I was terrified,” Perlman said. “It’s that I thought to myself, `Oh my God, this is how people die.'”
One of the firefighters working search and rescue, Victor Lecodet of Truck 3, said some of the workers he encountered were panicked.
“We had to let them know, just a couple floors and you’ll be OK,” Lecodet said Tuesday.
Another on the search-and-rescue team, Marty Chapman of Truck 11, said he worked for about an hour and a half before succumbing to heat exhaustion about 9 p.m.
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Chapman was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital Medical Center, where he was treated and released. He returned to the fire about 10:30 p.m. and asked to go back in and help, but his superiors wouldn’t let him.
`Company pride’
“It’s just a job,” Chapman said of why he returned. “I just call it company pride.”
It was the kind of reaction that earned high marks from city officials and members of the county-appointed commission that reviewed the Fire Department’s response to the fire at 69 W. Washington.
In their report on that fire, commission members blasted the Fire Department for their effort.
Their reaction was much different Tuesday.
“I would suggest this was a worse scenario than 69 W. Washington, because it was an older, larger building and the fire was on a higher floor,” said William Cousins, a member of the commission. “It raged for five hours, and it spread. I think we can count our lucky stars.”