When their bedroom filled with black smoke early Tuesday morning, Karen Jimenez immediately thought that she didn’t want to die thousands of miles away from her family in Venezuela.
“I grabbed my kids and just ran,” the 26-year-old said, still shaken several hours later.
Jimenez, who had just moved into the apartment a month and a half ago, was one of dozens of migrants who were caught off guard when the fire broke out in the Austin neighborhood early Tuesday. One man died.
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Now, the migrants, who had been in the United States for less than two years, found themselves pushed into homelessness — a challenging reality under any circumstance, but especially for people without legal status, financial resources or family support.
The blaze began shortly before 2:30 a.m. in the 18-unit building located in the 300 block of South Kilpatrick Avenue, said Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department. He said most of the building’s residents are migrants. A man believed to be in his early 50s was transported to Stroger Hospital, where he died of his injuries, Langford and Chicago police said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, although there’s no indication at this point that it was “nefarious,” Langford said. The man who died was on the floor above where the fire occurred, Langford said, speculating he died of smoke inhalation. Multiple people were displaced due to the fire, police said.
Two residents of the building who sat on lawn chairs in the building’s muddy backyard said the man who died was of Puerto Rican descent and had a disability that affected his ability to get out of the building in time. They said some residents received medical treatment.
“The firefighters were focused on getting the kids out,” said one of the women, Maria Hernandez, 45, who lives in the building and has several children.
By midmorning Tuesday, Jimenez sat in a red truck with all of her belongings — a mattress, bags of clothes, bowls — piled high in the back and watched her daughter Kleidimar, 6 and son Eric, 4, play with their little brown cat. They put a black crate over it and sat on top of the makeshift jail, smiling triumphantly. But the cat wriggled its head through a handle and squeezed through.
“It escaped!” Kleidimar giggled, chasing after it.
Jimenez watched them tiredly. Eric’s birthday was Saturday, but she said they didn’t have the means or time to celebrate. She and her kids, like others, had moved into the four-story apartment building because it was the only option they could afford.
At that point, she had received no answers from the property owner about what alternative options she and her family had moving forward. She thought there might be some other outside assistance available, but wasn’t sure if her pending legal status would affect her ability to get help from the government.
“This apartment wasn’t exactly comfortable,” said Jimenez, who previously lived in a different building just a couple of miles away with the help of rental assistance from the state, before deciding to move into something cheaper. “But it’s better to live under a roof than to live on the street.”
Late Tuesday afternoon, Luis Pliego, 42, a handyman working to shutter the windows on the charred building with plywood, told the Tribune that the building manager had moved several families to a different building owned by the same company on the Far South Side.
The building is owned by an LLC based out of Brooklyn, New York, according to city and state records. The man listed as the manager of the LLC declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday afternoon.
In March, the building failed an inspection with a number of violations, including for failing to maintain a chimney, failing to maintain exterior stairways as well as rat, bed bug and roach infestations. They were also cited for missing smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
Nefsa’Hyatt Brown, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Buildings, said that after “continued noncompliance” the department had escalated matters to the Department of Administrative Hearings. Brown said the owner didn’t attend the hearing on July 16 and received a $10,000 fine.
“Our thoughts and prayers remain with the families of those who lost loved ones and others who were impacted by the fire in the Austin community last night,” Brown said. “As the City of Chicago’s enforcement agency, safety is our top priority, and the Department of Buildings remains committed to holding those accountable who jeopardize our mission of community safety by not complying with the Chicago Construction Code.”
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For years, city officials scrambled to shelter the tens of thousands of migrants fleeing economic turmoil and political unrest, who were dropped off on buses by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott starting in August 2022. A state rental assistance program helped people move into apartments, albeit some that were considered unlivable. However, that money only lasted for three to six months, and the program has since stopped, leaving many migrants scrambling to find alternative options.
Jimenez said that as a migrant, she’s had to adapt quickly to changing circumstances. She and her kids arrived in Chicago in September 2023 and lived in a shelter near the United Center for six months before moving into their own apartment. But they never thought they’d go through something like this, she admitted.
“Everything happened really suddenly,” she said.
She said police told residents early in the morning that they needed to vacate the premises — it wasn’t safe to live there anymore.
Debris and charred pieces of wood covered the ground of the apartments on the third and fourth floors. Gaping holes in the ceilings exposed the building’s structure, with water still pouring through, soaking what remained — a stroller, a pair of socks, boxing gloves hanging on the wall. Children played on the sidewalk outside the building, weaving bikes between piles of salvaged belongings.
“We were barely surviving before this happened,” said Ellis Vasquez, 29, who came out of a third-floor apartment to dust off some of her clothes.
She said she wanted to make pasta for her family to eat for lunch, but was afraid to turn the oven on. Without a work permit, she said it would be hard to start from ground zero, buying all new appliances and clothes. She’s been selling candy to make some extra cash.
Maria Torres, 45, said she has asthma and worries about her health. She knows several others who also have asthma. For now, they’re living out of their cars. They all don’t know when they will have access to a shower next.
“We’re all at risk because we don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said. “No one will take us in.”
baiduhai’s Deanese Williams-Harris contributed.