A young girl died after a fire broke out in an apartment building Wednesday morning in Roseland on the Far South Side, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
The child was found under debris in the bedroom of a second-floor unit of a courtyard building at 11035 S. King Dr., Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said. She was 2 or 3 years old.
Firefighters “worked feverishly after they were told a child was in there,” Langford said. “The apartment was full of a lot of debris –furniture, objects that made it difficult to conduct the search.”
Firefighters tried to resuscitate the child but she was pronounced dead at Comer Children’s Hospital, Langford said.
Firefightershad responded to several calls of a heavy fire coming from an apartment and a person possibly trapped inside, Langford said. The Fire Department sent extra personnel in anticipation of a rescue.
Two adults from the unit had escaped when firefighters arrived, Langford said. The rear door of the unit appeared to be locked and someone may have jumped to safety from a window, he said. There were no working smoke detectors inside.
“When firefighters got to the scene, they knew the chances of survival were slim because fire was blowing out the windows,” he said.
Firefighters made an “aggressive search” and knocked down the fire with hoses, “hoping during the search the child was taken out before.”
The fire was extinguished before it could spread to adjacent units, Langford said. The building will be without power while Fire Department investigators look into the fire’s cause.
