This from Dave Weaver, radioman911.com:
8/23/16 CHICAGO – 4-Fatality 3-11 Alarm/EMS Plan 2 Apartment Fire 8114 S. Essex Ave. – (Englewood fire radio repeater traffic edited for major transmissions only and heavily time-condensed) Recording by Radioman911/Audio via Broadcastify
Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
A 3-month-old baby, two girls 4 and 7, and a man died in an extra-alarm fire in an apartment building in the South Chicago neighborhood early Tuesday, and police said a man suspected of starting the fire after an argument is being held.
Officials said that the baby died after being found next to a man who had jumped from the three-story building in the 8100 block of South Essex Avenue at 1:39 a.m., the two girls were found in an apartment on the third floor, and the man was discovered in an apartment next door.
A police source said a man suspected of starting the fire has been taken into custody. He apparently had an argument with someone in the South Side building, and that person was able to escape the fire.
Deputy Fire Commissioner Arriel Gray said firefighters encountered heavy flames on the second and third floors. Both stairwells were compromised. Fire crews were unable to get inside the building because of the intensity of the fire and had to combat the blaze from the outside.
The fire was struck out at 5:39 a.m., according to Gray.
Witnesses said they saw several people jump from the building, which has about 32 apartments. Fire officials said they used ladders to rescue several people.
The 3-month-old was taken in critical condition to Comer Children’s Hospital and was pronounced dead at 2:40 a.m.
A 48-year-old man was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition, and two other people were taken to South Shore Hospital, one in fair condition and the other in a good condition.
The bodies of a man and two children were found hours later as firefighters finally got access to the part of the building where the fire started.
People jumped from apartments on the second and third floors on the south side of the U-shaped apartment building.
The building, its apartments facing 81st Street and Essex Avenue, has failed every annual inspection dating to 2011, according to records from the Chicago Department of Buildings.
The most recent failed inspection was in November 2015. City officials were unable to access most of the apartments or the rear porches to fully investigate the conditions of the structure, records show. In the areas city officials were able to investigate, they found a porch that was improperly secured to the building, an interior stairwell missing pickets and mice droppings in a kitchen.
Among several violations listed in previous inspections were missing and non-functioning smoke detectors, non-functioning emergency lighting, fire extinguishers with expired tags, protruding nails on porches and rats inside a unit.
Police said they received reports around 1:35 a.m. that someone had set fire to the courtyard building. Responding firefighters called a 2-11 Alarm as the fire spread through the second and third floors. That was quickly followed by a 3-11 Alarm with an EMS Plan II, sending 10 ambulances and around 150 firefighters along with extra equipment to the fire.
