The fire broke out around 11 a.m. at a building on Granville Avenue, reportedly starting on the first floor. The intense flames caused the back porches to collapse.
An adult and a child were hospitalized in critical condition, while a firefighter sustained minor injuries. The 6-year-old child succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.
Roughly 100 firefighters responded to the scene.
Sources the mother was taken to Swedish Hospital in critical condition. One firefighter was also taken to Saint Francis Hospital and the other to Illinois Masonic Hospital, both in good condition. The firefighters were injured when one of the building’s stairwells collapsed.
Fire Department officials said the bitter cold also posed a challenge for firefighters.
While there were no issues with getting water on the flames, the cold temperatures froze the water on the ground, making for hazardous conditions.
Firefighters opened holes in the roof to ventilate the smoke, and raised ladders in case anyone needed to be rescued.
“We put all these ladders up to facilitate rescues in case we had to get people down the ladders.
The stairwells were very heavily engulfed in flames, so we couldn’t get people down the stairwell. But when I got here, there was nobody coming down the ladders,” Chicago Fire Department District Chief Robert Jurewicz said.
A man who used to live in the building said he tried to rescue the 6-year-old boy who died. He went to the child’s apartment after seeing smoke and flames coming into his own apartment, but when he tried to open the door, the doorknob was so hot that he burned his hand.
He and other tenants took shelter on a warming bus after the fire, as they waited to get back inside to find out what belongings they could salvage from the fire.
