Woman dies after unattended cooking catches fire in Lincoln Park apartment

A woman died after her unattended cooking caught fire Tuesday morning in her Lincoln Park apartment, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

Smoke alarms went off in the hallway outside her third-story studio apartment, at 2322 N. Commonwealth Ave., but there was no working alarm in her unit that could’ve alerted her that smoke was filing her apartment, CFD spokesman Larry Langford said.

She was identified Wednesday as 55-year-old Susan Hurber, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy ruled her death an accident due to an inhalation injury from a kitchen fire.

Firefighters responded to a blaze around 6:50 a.m. and quickly found her unconscious and started CPR, Langford said. Paramedics brought her to Saint Joseph Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

The fire was contained to the studio apartment and there was no word of other displacements, Langford said. There was a lot of smoke but little fire, and the blaze was extinguished quickly, he said.

A preliminary investigation found that the cause of the fire was “unattended cooking,” Langford said.

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