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Chicago Office Building Fire Kills Six

Posted on: Saturday, 18 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

Fire broke out Friday in a high-rise county administration building in Chicago's Loop business district, killing six people and trapping other workers in smoke-filled stairways and hallways, officials said.

Some of those trapped in the 35-story building frantically dialed 911 on their cell phones.

Ten people were being treated at hospitals, some in serious and critical condition, authorities said.

"I was scared for my life. I still am," said Marienne Branch, who works in the public defender's office on the 17th floor and made her way down a smoky stairwell with colleagues.

In addition to the public defender's office, the building houses county prosecutors, the secretary of state's office and other local and state government agencies.

The 5 p.m fire snarled rush-hour traffic in the Loop and forced subway commuters to bypass underground tunnels. Commuters could see flames and smoke pouring from the building's 12th-story windows, where the fire originated.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, but workers on the 12th floor said they first saw smoke coming from a storage room.

Fire Commissioner James Joyce said the building had an alarm system but no sprinklers. It holds as many as 2,500 people during business hours.

The dead were among 13 people overcome by smoke who were not found until after the fire was brought under control and firefighters started conducting a floor-by-floor search of the building, authorities said.

Joyce said the people who died appeared to be from one stairwell around the 22nd floor, 10 stories above the source of the fire. Most of the injured were found in the stairways and hallways from the 16th to the 22nd floors, he said.

A comprehensive search of the building was completed about five hours after the fire was first reported, he said.

"Searching for all those people, at the same time fighting the fire, is more complicated than it looks from the outside," Joyce said.

Firefighters escorted some workers down stairways and evacuated a daycare center without incident, fire officials said.

Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine and a group of co-workers were forced back by the smoke in the stairways; they called fire officials and were escorted down in another corner of the building.

Devine said his group was stymied by locked doors on several floors as they worked their way through the stairwell. It was not clear what role if any the locked doors played in the evacuation.

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