Emerging from the scorched brick apartment building, Katie Cummings walked over to her roommates standing on the sidewalk next to a small pile of salvaged belongings along Grand Avenue in West Town.
“There is nothing,” said Cummings, who had been escorted into the building in hopes of recovering a pair of shoes. “There is nothing.”
She and her roommates, Samantha Taylor and Kaeley Melaniphy, had been asleep when the fire started around 1:30 a.m. Friday.
Cummings said she woke up to people yelling and noticed smoke filling her room. Through a window, she saw flames rising from the top of the building next door, some reaching nearly as high as her window. She got her dog, Barley, and ran outside.
“He’s been very good in [this] crisis,” Cummings said. “Much better than all of us.”
Still in shock, her roommates agreed. The women said they’d been told their apartment was a total loss.
The fire started on the upper level of a two-story apartment building in the 1100 block of West Grand Avenue and spread west to the four-story building where the three roommates live, according to Deputy District Chief Michael Carbone.
Firefighters got the call about 1:30 a.m. and upgraded the response to a 2-11 alarm. They had the fire under control just before 2:45 a.m., he said.
Three firefighters were taken to a hospital, two with heat-related issues and one with a shoulder injury. They were in good condition, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
Melaniphy, who was also briefly allowed back in the building, said all she has are the pajamas she was wearing and her soot-covered phone. “It looks like a nightmare,” she said.
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Carbone said the fire displaced about seven residents in all. The Red Cross was on scene.
Max Mustard, who lives in the Netherlands, said he was in town for an academic publishing conference and was staying in the four-story building through AirBnb.
Describing the experience as “crazy,” Mustard said he was waiting to find out where his host would be staying, and was anxious about finding a place to freshen up before a 7:30 a.m. meeting.