1 Injured In Lincoln Park Apartment Blaze
UPDATED 02/07/11 4:10 p.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- One person was taken to the hospital from the scene of an extra-alarm fire, in an apartment building on the north edge of the Lincoln Park neighborhood on Monday afternoon.
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Five ambulances were sent to 2630 N. Hampden Ct. around 2:30 p.m., fire officials said. At least eight fire trucks and engines, a battalion chief, an Emergency Medical Services field officer and the fire Command Van were also dispatched.
At the scene, fire District Chief Peter Van Dorpe said the blaze broke out in a kitchen in one unit on the second floor. He said only one person was taken to the hospital, in good condition, but a 2-11 alarm and an Emergency Medical Services Plan 1 -- automatically sending five ambulances -- were called due to concerns based on the construction of the building.
Six or more people refused medical attention at the scene, Van Dorpe said.
The structure is a four-plus-one, a frame-construction building with rows of apartments on four stories and a parking garage on the lower level. Numerous such buildings were constructed along the north lakefront during the mid-20th century.
Since the buildings are less air-tight and there was a risk of smoke permeating, the extra alarm was called, Van Dorpe said.
"A lot of smoke spread throughout the building," Van Dorpe said. "That's just the nature of these structures."
The building had no sprinklers, Van Dorpe said.
He said most of the building should still be inhabitable after the fire, except for the unit where the fire broke out.
A resident of the building, Ryan Ochoa, told CBS 2 he was returning home from buying groceries in the mid-afternoon, when two painters in the foyer told him there was a fire in the building and he could not come inside. He was standing outside the building for more than an hour with his groceries.
"I walked back there and saw that the firefighters got in," Ochoa said. "It looked like the whole apartment got blacked out."
As he stood in the snow, Ochoa said he was looking forward to getting back in.
"I've got groceries, and I'm cold, and I have a cat, so I want to check out and make sure everything is OK," he said.
A woman who lives nearby, Kiraz Downey, captured a digital picture of what she said was a loud explosion coming from a rear unit of the building.
Streets nearby were closed off around the area, including Wrightwood Avenue between Clark Street and Hampden Court, and Hampden Court itself between Wrightwood Avenue and Deming Place. Fire equipment was staged as far north as Diversey Parkway.
CBS Chicago Web Producer Adam Harrington and the Sun-Times Media Wire contributed
