Woodridge Family Escapes Early Morning Fire
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A pregnant woman woke up to find her house on fire Tuesday morning in west suburban Woodridge, and she scrambled to get her family to safety.
CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports the fire in the 7800 block of Deerfield Avenue sent six people to the hospital.
Neighbor Jeff Jordan said, when he first saw the fire around 1:15 a.m., flames were shooting about 30 feet in the air through the roof, searing trees behind the house.
Laura Adler, who is pregnant, said she was woken from a dead sleep, and immediately ran to her baby girls in a panic.
"My husband was yelling 'Wake up! Wake up! There's a fire in the house!' And I ran. I got my girls, and we ran out," Adler said.
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Her husband was awake at the time the fire started in their kitchen.
"I started screaming as loud as I could, making as much noise as possible, trying to get everybody out," Dustin Adler said.
They Adlers, their children, and their 70-year-old grandmother made it out the front door.
Neighbors also helped rescue their 20-year-old cousin, who was trapped in the basement.
"There was two gentlemen on the side, pulling a young lady out through the window, and she kept saying 'There's babies inside. My mother, my grandmother inside,'" he said. "We were real concerned. It was flames coming out the back. The power had been popped, and it was sparking all over."
Minutes after everyone got out, gasoline tanks stored in the home caught fire, and the blaze ended up gutting the inside of the ranch-style house.
No one was seriously injured, and everyone who was taken to the hospital was released within a matter of hours.
The homeowners said smoke detectors in the home did not go off until there was thick black smoke throughout the house. The cause of the fire was under investigation.
