May 5, 2007 7:45 pm US/Central
Bomb & Arson Units Investigate Loop Fires
Friday Blazes Started By 'Paper Products'
CBS 2's Kris Habermehl, Dana Kozlov, Rafael Romo and the STNG Wire contributed to this report.
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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The fire at 218 S. Wabash was on the ninth-floor of an old mid-rise building.
CBS
Two suspicious fires erupted a short distance from each other in the Loop Friday evening, and police bomb and arson units spent Saturday looking into whether the two are connected.
The first fire broke out at 218 S. Wabash Ave. about 5:30 p.m., and while crews fought those flames they spotted another fire at 230 S. Wabash Ave.
The Chicago Fire Department said Saturday that both fires were started by "paper products," but they are not yet calling them arson.
Police were treating the area as a crime scene Saturday, and the building was off limits to most people. Bomb and arson units with the Chicago Police Department spent most of the day collecting evidence.
When the fires first broke out Friday evening, flames could be seen from the sky shooting from the upper floors of the building at 218 S. Wabash Ave.
"A student walked by my store at about 20 after five and said 'There's smoke coming out of the eight floor, I just thought you might want to know it may be a fire up there,'" said business owner Brian Flax.
The two-alarm fire was extinguished rather quickly, with minimal damage to most of the 100-year-old building. But as firefighters worked to secure that scene, smoke and then flames shot out of a window in a building just two doors south.
The second fire took people on the ground by surprise, as firefighters scrambled to get to it. Both buildings affected are owned by the same person.
Chicago Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco said Friday that state investigators were involved and that there was no way one blaze started the other.
"Two separate fires, two separate points of origin – this is not a communication of the fire from the original fire at 218 [S. Wabash]," Orozco said. "There's a building in between with fire walls, there's four sets of fire walls. So what we're doing is we're looking at this right now; there are definitely two different points of origin."
"We'll say they're suspicious," Orozco added. "We're in the early stages of the investigation right now."
Two firefighters and one cleaning crew worker from the first fire were treated for smoke inhalation. No injuries were reported, but there are several businesses located in the buildings and they were scheduled to remain closed through the rest of the weekend.
The top floors of the building at 218 S. Wabash Ave. were being rehabbed.
The top floor of the second building, where the second fire originated, was a working office but all employees had taken the day off.
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