Baby girl found dead after West Side apartment building blaze
BY MICHAEL LANSU AND STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporters September 19, 2012 6:36PM
Miracle Hooks | Courtesy NBC5
Updated: September 20, 2012 12:34AM
Firefighters battling a “heavy fire” at a Humboldt Park apartment building found an infant girl dead in a bedroom Wednesday night on the West Side.
The fire started about 5:05 p.m. at a two-story apartment building in the 3100 block of West Franklin Boulevard, Fire Media Affairs spokeswoman Meg Alhleim said.
Firefighters arrived about two minutes later and found “heavy heat and heavy fire” in the rear of the building, Alhleim said. A group of people outside the building, including the infant’s grandmother, told firefighters the baby was still inside, Fire Media Affairs Director Larry Langford said.
Firefighters found the infant dead in a back bedroom in the first floor apartment, Alhleim said.
“They made an aggressive attack,” Langford said. “They got into the back as fast as they could, but it was too late.”
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office has been notified of a fatality from the fire, but is not releasing further information, a spokesman said.
Investigators found smoke detectors on the first and second floors, but it was not yet known if they were working, Alhleim said. The fire department will pass out smoke detectors around the area Thursday morning, she said.
“We faced a lot of very heavy fire,” Langford said. “Enough to melt the smoke detectors off the wall.”
Eighteen adults and 12 children were displaced by the blaze, Alhleim said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, and investigators were looking into whether wind was a factor in how quickly the blaze spread.
