The latter half of July was busy for Wilmette firefighters, with house fires, including some apparently caused by lightning strikes during the storms of July 22 and 23, keeping crews busy. Some of the action spilled over to neighboring Kenilworth and Winnetka as well, fire department officials in Wilmette and Winnetka said.
The most recent fire, Wilmette Fire Chief Mike McGreal said, was a house fire on the 1800 block of Elmwood Avenue shortly past 3:30 p.m. July 30. Neighbors of the two-story bungalow were alerted by one of the home’s two elderly residents, who told one of her neighbors that curtains in a main floor room were on fire, McGreal said. One of the neighbors then went into the house and called for the second resident, getting her out, he added.
He said firefighters rescued the residents’ pet cat and confined the flames to two rooms on the first floor, but the building had widespread smoke damage. Crews from Winnetka, Glenview, Glencoe, Northfield, Skokie, and Evanston were also on the scene, he said.
“This was a significant incident, since the two elderly residents were in their 90s,” McGreal said. “There were no working smoke detectors, no fire alarm. If this call had been in the middle of the night and not in the afternoon, there would have been the likelihood of a fatality.”
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McGreal said the two residents were treated and later released from Evanston Hospital. He said the fire could have caused what he called “minimal damage” had the house been equipped with a fire sprinkler.
During the rain and thunderstorms that hit Wilmette and Winnetka the previous weekend, on July 22 and 23, crews were busy not only with fires, but with flooding that temporarily closed the Edens Expressway on July 23, according to Tom Robertson, Wilmette’s deputy fire chief.
Wilmette fire crews responded to two fires caused by possible lightning strikes on July 23, one just before 5:40 p.m. to a house on the 200 block of Greenleaf Avenue, causing what Robertson said was minor damage valued at under $10,000, and the second only minutes later, at 5:50 p.m., to a house on the 2000 block of Elmwood Avenue. Firefighters found no damage to the building there, Robertson said.
Wilmette crews also responded to calls from Winnetka, Kenilworth, and Skokie, Robertson said.
The first Winnetka call came in around 6 p.m. on July 23, when lightning struck a house on the 1300 block of Westmoor Trail, Winnetka Fire Chief Alan Berkowsky said. No one was injured, and damage estimated at $10,000 was limited to a roof area just above a bathroom ceiling, he said.
On July 24, Winnetka firefighters put out a fire in a rear sun room on the 500 block of Earlston Road in Kenilworth, a call that came around 8 a.m., Berkowsky said: “We think that was smoldering from a lightning strike the night before, and finally caught the next day.”
That fire caused an estimated $210,000 in damage, he said.
Robertson said Wilmette also responded to an apartment fire call in Skokie on July 23, and later dealt with water rather than flame, when a crew was called to the Edens underpass at Winnetka Road shortly after 10:20 p.m.
A special department rescue crew plucked five people from the roofs of their cars after the vehicles were caught by a flash flood that left about four feet of water in the underpass and temporarily closed the Edens in both directions, he said.
Wilmette’s department has a water rescue team with specialized equipment, including a rapid deployment boat, which was why they were called to the scene, Robertson said.
Robertson said fire department crews also responded on July 23 to the 1600 block of Forest Avenue in Wilmette, where a possible lightning strike may have caused a large tree limb to fall on a garage, causing what he described as “significant” damage.
The department took many flooded basement calls that day, Robertson said; paramedics also responded to a motor vehicle accident on the 900 block of Green Bay Road. In that case, the 77-year-old driver apparently suffered a cardiac arrest, he said The driver was taken to Evanston Hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later, Robertson said.
“We were extremely busy that weekend. It was just incredible,” he said.
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