Dec. 29--One person died and a 5-year-old girl suffered burns to her entire body during a fire in the Lawndale neighborhood that lasted only a few minutes early Saturday, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
An adult female died in the fire, fire officials said, with the other three victims still reported in critical condition. The Cook County medical examiner's office has not been notified.
The 5-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy, with burns to 35 percent of his body, were taken to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County from their home in the 4200 block of West 21st Place.
A total of six people were taken to area hospitals, four in serious-to-critical condition. Police said the six were all from the same family. The fire broke out after 4:30 a.m.
The first responding engine didn't see any fire but found one victim on the front lawn, said Chicago Fire Department District Chief Peter Van Dorpe. But the fire "vented," meaning a window blew out and fed the fire oxygen, and immediately spread through the first floor.
Van Dorpe said the first battalion chief at the scene called an EMS Plan 1, for an extra five ambulances, and escalated the alarm to bring more firefighters to the scene.
Among the others injured: a 30-year-old man was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with burns to 90 percent of his body, a 20-year-old woman went to the same hospital with burns to 80 percent of her body, and two women, 60 and 84, were taken in fair-to-serious condition to Saint Anthony Hospital.
The two adults taken to Mount Sinai were transferred to Stroger Hospital. The condition on the two women sent to Saint Anthony improved to good-to-fair.
The fire was out in just a few minutes, Van Dorpe said, though some of the fire extended to a neighboring home. The fire was confined to the first floor but the home isn't habitable and up to eight people were displaced, Van Dorpe said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Fire trucks, engines, specialty equipment and police cars surrounded the block on all sides -- all of 21st Place and Cermak Road on the north and south, and Keeler and Kildare on the east and west.
The distinct smell of structure fire lingered in the air even after firefighters were folding hoses and leaving the scene.
Neighbors gawked at the sight of the house. The front room, seen through a broken front window, was completely blackened. Upstairs windows were broken out.
More than a dozen firefighters, headlamps and chest lights still lit, streamed out of the brown-brick two flat once the fire was out. More firefighters walked to the front from the west side of the house, where a large ladder had been leaned against the building.
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