Dec 13, 2007 10:32 pm US/Central
Residents: No Warning Of High-Rise Fire
Building Evacuated, But Many Said No Alarms Were Sounded; 1 Firefighter Injured
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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A fire broke out in a Wrigleyville high-rise at 810 W. Grace.
CBS
A fire erupted in a high-rise in the North Side Lakeview neighborhood Thursday afternoon.
As CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, some residents are slowly being allowed back into their units at the Gill Park Cooperative Thursday night. Firefighters Thursday night said all except those on the 19th, 20th and 21st floors of the 27-story building are back in their apartments.
The fire broke out in the 19th floor of the building at 810 W. Grace, about 3:45 p.m. Fire Chief Raymond Orozco said the fire started in unit 1907 and spread to the other floors.
The fire was extinguished as of 4:45 p.m. No residents were injured. One firefighter was taken to the hospital.
Residents said no alarms went off, and each of the residents has a story to tell about how they made it to safety. One family was alerted by their young daughter.
"She's actually the one who told my wife that something was happening, something hitting windows, and my wife looked and smelled smoke and ended up knocking on the door of my floor and got most everybody out," said resident Michael Lopez.
Alex Rodriguez lives on the 16th floor and first learned of the fire when a friend called, and then he saw fire engines coming down the street.
"A good friend called, otherwise I wouldn't have known because no alarm went off,'' Rodriguez said.
Another resident who lives on the 11th floor said people were running and yelling, telling people to get out. However, nobody on his floor heard an alarm.
"I came outside and I saw the flames," said a man who identified himself as Chris. "No warning, just people screaming and knocking on people's doors.''
Residents said their units and hallways have smoke alarms.
"We put firefighters on all three of the fire floors and stationed them above the fire floors to assist any resident who needed assistance and we put firefighters in both stairwells, in the fire tac stairwell and the evacuation stairwell," said Fire Chief Raymond Orozco.
Eight apartments on three floors suffered fire and smoke damage.
As scary as the sight of a high-rise fire is, people seemed to take this one in stride.
"It was good. Wasn't nobody panicking," said resident Michael Bell. "It was orderly."
This was one of those cases where everybody did the right thing. The fire department arrived quickly and executed their plan. Residents stayed calm and evacuated in an orderly way. The situation could have been a lot worse.
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