On this day 20 years ago: Lincoln Park porch collapse leaves 13 people dead, 57 injured
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) -- Thursday marks 20 years since two levels of rear porches filled with partygoers collapsed in Lincoln Park – leaving 13 people dead and 57 more were injured.
It was the deadliest porch accident in U.S. history – a distinction that holds 20 years later.
The night of Saturday, June 28, into Sunday, June 29, was warm and pleasant in Chicago. The Chicago Pride Parade was coming up the next afternoon. The Cubs and White Sox were in the midst of a Crosstown Classic at what is now known as Guaranteed Rate Field. "Hulk" was a smash at movie theaters.
And in the Lincoln Park neighborhood at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave. – an architecturally striking three-flat building dating back to the 1880s with a dry cleaners on the ground floor in front – a large group of young professionals had gathered on the rear porches for a party that spanned two stories.
Wine was being served on the third-floor porch, beer on the second. The crowd enjoyed the party deep into the night.
"It was a good atmosphere," pediatric nurse Katie Main told CBS News' "48 Hours" in 2003. "There was a really great group of people."
"Everybody was just out having a good time. It was kids seeing each other for the first time over summer," Northern Illinois University football player Pat Raleigh, who was at the party, told "48 Hours."
"Everybody was really friendly. Everybody was smiling," then-college student John Koranda – who was invited by his big brother, Rob, one of the party hosts – told the program.
The invitation to the party promised a "Double Decker" evening, CBS News recalled.
Natalie Brougham talked to WBBM Newsradio's Steve Miller 10 years ago. She said she remembered going up to the third-floor porch to get some wine.
"I almost went back downstairs, and I got stopped by this guy who was talking to me about life insurance, and I was about to walk downstairs, and I was like, 'Whatever, I'll just hear this guy out,'" she told Miller. "Right then is when it happened."
Around 12:30 a.m., the third-floor deck – packed with dozens of partygoers – collapsed down onto the second-floor deck crowded deck – plunging as many as 100 people into a basement pit.
"Crack, crack, crack, crack," Paul Mugler told "48 Hours." "I saw the beam tear away from the wall."
"There was no warning," Koranda told the program. "You just fell … Somehow I fell all the way to the bottom, and my shoulder was on the basement floor."
Mugler fell two floors and landed on top of the pile: He told "48 Hours:" "The screams came, just screams of terror, [I thought] just get off this pile, because there were people beneath me … You couldn't see faces. You could just see hands trying to reach out and push whatever off them … Just grabbing for anything and just yelling for help, yelling for help."
Koranda told "48 Hours" he was buried alive underneath the pile: "I was laying on my side and I couldn't move anything. All I could move was my hand, my left hand, which I tried to put on my mouth because I was just thinking that if something else falls … I can have a pocket to breathe."
Koranda's brother did not survive.
Meanwhile, Brougham said seven people ended up on top of her once the porches gave way.
"It broke my nose, but I'm one of the very lucky people," she told WBBM Newsradio. "That was probably my most major injury. There was somebody who bit off her tongue. It was pretty crazy."
The 13 people who died in the collapse were:
- Sam Farmer, 21 – a New Trier High School graduate from Winnetka. The Washington Post reported Farmer had just come home to the Chicago area after completing his second year of college at the University of Arizona.
- Shea Fitzgerald, 19 – Farmer's best friend and a standout wrestler and football player at New Trier. Fitzgerald, also of Winnetka, had overcome a form of dyslexia to win a full scholarship to Northern Illinois University.
- Muhammed Hameeduddin, 25 – a Chicago resident and a 2001 magna cum laude graduate of Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The native of Karachi, Pakistan was working as an actuary at the Chicago office of Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
- Margaret Haynie, 25 – an Evansville, Indiana native and Indiana University alum who had moved to Chicago to work in commercial lending for Banc One.
- John T. Jackson, 22 – a Kansas City, Missouri native who had recently moved to Chicago and was just five days into a new job at the Draper and Kramer property and financial services company. Jackson had graduated from Georgetown University with a business degree a week earlier.
- Robert Koranda, 23 – a Naperville resident who had been a star linebacker for Naperville North High School and played for a year at Princeton University. He had graduated from Princeton and was working as an analyst at LaSalle Bank downtown. Koranda was a host of the party – his brother John told "48 Hours" about finding out about his death as family friends drove him home.
- Eric Kumpf, 30 – a Hoboken, New Jersey resident and a 1994 graduate of the University of Rhode Island. He worked as a trader at Barclays Capital in New York, and family said he had been in Chicago on business.
- Eileen Lupton, 22 – a Lake Forest resident who had recently graduated from the nursing program at Villanova University. Her family said she had planned to work as a pediatric nurse at Children's Memorial Hospital – which back then was still a short distance away in Lincoln Park.
- Kelly McKinnell, 26 – a resident of Barrington who had earned a photography degree from the University of Michigan. She had taught photography at The Latin School, where she had earlier attended high school, and traveled the country taking real estate pictures. Her family told The Associated Press she was planning to move to Los Angeles.
- Kelly Pagel, 25 – who grew up in the Twin Cities suburb of Minnetonka, Minnesota and graduated in 2000 from the University of Michigan. Pagel was working as a consultant for ZS Associates in Evanston, according to the Daily Northwestern.
- Katherine "Katie" Sheriff, 23 – a Chicago resident and a 2001 graduate of Duke University. Sheriff had been working as the director of marketing for Lee Lumber in Chicago, according to Duke.
- Julie Sorkin, 25 – a Glenview resident and New Trier alum who had just finished her master's in social work at the University of Chicago, and had planned to work with special-needs children. Sorkin had just signed a contract to buy a house with her fiancé, New Trier alum Ben Bradford, and they were to be married that December, the AP reported. Bradford also attended the party.
- Henry "Jay" Wischerath, 24 – a Buffalo, New York native and a graduate of Boston University, where he had been the coxswain on the rowing crew. Wischerath had just finished his first year at the University of Chicago Law School – which his friends said he had passed over Harvard Law School to attend.
In the wake of the collapse, demolition crews under city supervision removed the remaining porch structure on the grounds that it was not safe – drawing some objections from attorneys that such an act made it more difficult to investigate the cause of the collapse. CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reported at the time that the remainder of the porch had to be removed because it was a safety hazard.
Meanwhile, city Buildings Commissioner Norma Reyes emphasized that rear wooden porch structures are intended for egress and ingress – not for such large parties or assemblies. City officials said initially said the porch was overcrowded, and said several partygoers were jumping on the decks before they gave way.
But days afterward, the city filed a complaint against building owner Philip Pappas, his company LG Properties, and porch builder Restoration Specialists LLC. They were accused of constructing the porch, and converting the building from five units to three, without a permit.
The city said the porch jutted out too far from the building and was larger than allowed by city codes. Inspectors also said it did not have proper supports, had undersized wood flooring, and was attached with screws too small for the job.
Pappas incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Survivors and families of the victims also filed suit. The case against Pappas, LG Properties, and Restoration Specialists LLC was eventually settled for $16.6 million after 10 years of litigation.
The city also imposed tougher building codes and began many more porch inspections in the wake of the 2003 porch collapse.
The number of violations dropped over the several years afterward. In 2006, inspectors found 6,670 porch violations throughout Chicago. But in 2019, violations dropped to 2,127.