After things went wrong–a fire early Sunday morning in a condominium building–it seemed that several things went right.
“Everything that should have happened, did happen.” said Matt Reidy, an Elk Grove Village firefighter who was asleep at 4:18 a.m. Sunday when the alarms started sounding.
A water-flow alarm went off at a 58-unit condominium building about a football field away from the firehouse where Reidy slept. So did the smoke alarms. And then some 911 calls started trickling in.
Within minutes, the fire would be put out, and within hours, the residents, many of them elderly, would be left to pick through an estimated $10,000 in damage centered in a third-floor locker area where the blaze occurred.
In addition to Reidy and a bunked-down stable full of firefighters, the blaze awoke the residents of the Village on the Lake condominium building, many of whom huddled together on the lawn.
“Several of them required assistance,” said Fire Capt. Dave Miller, hours after the fire. “It could’ve been a lot worse.”
A generation ago, when water sprinklers weren’t required by building codes, when response systems weren’t wired into firehouses, when more combustible materials went into buildings, the small fire could have exploded into something deadly. It almost did anyway, because the fire burned dangerously close to an improperly stored propane tank.
But on Sunday there was only one injury. A young man suffered an asthma attack brought on by the heavy smoke. He walked to Alexian Brothers Medical Center next door and was back in time to see the four fire engines, four ambulances and one ladder truck leave the scene.
The fire seemed almost convenient, happening across the street from a fire station, next door to a hospital, in good weather and in a contained area.
“And I was getting new carpeting anyway,” joked Lori Boss, the 83-year-old president of the building’s condo association.
Boss said she was pleased with the firefighters’ work.
“They did such an excellent job. I have nothing but praise for the way they handled this,” said Boss, a 25-year member of the 27-year-old condo’s board. She was the first to the fire, knocked back by a cloud of acrid smoke when she opened the door to the storage area.
Boss called 911 and said firefighters and police arrived on the scene and began evacuating residents by the time she got off the phone.
Fire investigators and police were not saying what started the fire. At least twelve cars in the parking lot of the building, at 898 Wellington Ave., had slashed tires. Boss said one of the vandalized cars belongs to the man in whose locker space the fire started.
A combination of fire safety measures and quick work by firefighters may have averted a tragedy, fire officials said.
“We get our fire alarms checked every three months,” Boss said. “Good thing we do.”
