Chicago apartment fire kills eight, including six children
CHICAGo: Eight people, including six children, were killed when a fire broke out at a Chicago apartment in one of the deadliest fires in the nation’s third-largest city in years, officials say.
Two other people were hospitalised in very critical condition, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt said.
One of the children who died was an infant, according to Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago.
“We have not had this in many, many, many years – this amount of fatalities and injuries in one location,” he said.
A makeshift memorial along a nearby sidewalk included crosses for each child who died – a small Mickey Mouse doll set next to one.
Reverend Clifford Spears of Saint Michael Missionary Baptist Church led a crowd that gathered in prayer, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Officials had not released the names or ages of the victims, all of whom were in the same residence, Merritt said.
The cause of Sunday morning blaze hasn’t been determined.
A woman who saw the blaze as she was returning home from work alerted people and gave them a chance to escape, Santiago said. She called 911 around 4am, then began knocking on doors in the largely Hispanic Little Village neighbourhood on the city’s southwest side.
“So the female who did that saved a lot of lives,” Santiago said.
At least two buildings caught fire, one of them described by fire department officials as a coach house.
Video showed smoke coming from windows of a three-storey building’s stone facade, with flames engulfing the back.
Officers helped push a stretcher toward an ambulance, while a paramedic simultaneously performed CPR. One woman lay on a street crying while someone tried to comfort her.
The fire was put out by just after 5am, fire department officials said.
At least one firefighter was injured and was hospitalised in good condition. — AP