With their 3-year-old relative dead and two others hospitalized after a fire destroyed their multi-story apartment building in the
Pilsen neighborhood today, members of an extended family wondered where they will live as they mourn.
Jose Lopez was called at a mall and rushed home when he learned of the fire. Be he was unable to save his 3-year-old nephew, Michael Cruz, who died in the blaze that also injured the boy's sister, father and two firefighters.
"I wish I was (home), then I would've been able to help them," said Lopez, 30, who lives with his wife and their seven children on the third floor of the apartment building.
Now, he said, the family has no place else to go.
A member of the Chicago Fire Department battling flames at 1752 W. Cullerton St. Saturday. (Tribune / Nuccio DiNuzzo)
While battling the flames, firefighters found the child in the back bedroom of the second floor of the apartment building, said
Chicago Fire Department District Chief Thomas Kennedy.
The boy was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at St. Anthony Hospital, said a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner's office.
Of the four survivors, two of them were firefighters. The firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries, said
Chicago Fire Department spokesman Richard Rosado, adding that one suffered a back injury while the other suffered a shoulder injury.
The two civilians who were injured suffered from smoke inhalation and were taken in serious-to-critical condition to area hospitals, Rosado said.
Among those survivors were the 3-year-old boy's 1 ½-year-old sister and their father, also named Michael Cruz, 33, said Yolanda Cruz, the grandmother of the two children.
Shortly after 4 p.m., firefighters responded to the four-story apartment building at 1752 W. Cullerton St. in the
Pilsen neighborhood. Flames ended up damaging the second, third and fourth floors of the building, and spread to a rear coach house, said Kennedy.
Officials did not know how many people where in the buildings when the fire broke out, but Kennedy said everyone who survived the blaze was outdoors by the time firefighters arrived. Three dogs also died in the fire, but two others survived, he said.
The fire was believed to have started somewhere in the rear of the apartment building, but Kennedy could not say what caused it to erupt. Working smoke detectors were found in the hallway area of the apartment building, Kennedy said, but he did not know if there were alarms in the individual units.
The fire was brought under control by about 5:25 p.m.
The American Red Cross of Greater
Chicago said they would be providing aid, such as food, clothing and shelter, to 20 people affected by the fire.
Kristy Mendoza was watching the fire from her building nearby and said she saw a child wheeled out on a stretcher covered in soot and put into an ambulance. She also saw firefighters attending to a man, lying him out on the sidewalk.
Fire officials said this evening the cause of the blaze was being investigated.
--
Jeremy Gorner
