Fire officials will meet Thursday to determine when the high-rise at 135 S. LaSalle St. can reopen as investigators continue their search for clues among the charred remains on the building’s 29th floor.
The area was so badly damaged that fire officials say the search for a cause and origin has been slowed.
“The Office of Fire Investigation people have told me it doesn’t make it any easier, but it isn’t impossible to find clues,” said Larry Langford, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman.
“They have to be more meticulous, slower and precise in looking for clues.”
The building, which houses 3,000 LaSalle Bank employees and more than 40 smaller firms, has been closed since the fire broke out Monday night. Shawn Platt, a LaSalle Bank spokesman, said he has not been told when workers will be able to move back in.
“We still haven’t been given access to the building,” Platt said.
“Obviously, we’re eager to get in there.”
One thing fire officials will discuss Thursday is whether to allow parts of the building to reopen while the investigation on the 29th and 30th floors continues, Langford said.
Just how long the investigation will take is unclear.
“Nobody’s going to pressure them into coming up with something,” Langford said. “They’re going to take the time they need to do it the right way.”
The blaze, which broke out at around 6:30 p.m. Monday, took firefighters more than five hours to extinguish. A total of 39 people were treated at area hospitals for injuries sustained in the fire. Of those, 24 were firefighters.
Fire officials said only two firefighters remained hospitalized Wednesday. Both were listed in fair condition at Stroger Hospital, where they were expected to remain overnight.
Both had previously been given a breathing tube, a move described by fellow firefighters as a precautionary measure.
Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter said Wednesday that the two were on the mend and in good spirits.
“They’re sitting up, talking,” Trotter said. “They’re laughing with their families.”
Trotter attributed the number of firefighter injuries to the intensity of the blaze and to the number of emergency crew members that responded. About 450 Fire Department employees were dispatched to the building. Trotter said that given that number, and the complexities of fighting a high-rise fire, 24 injuries is not alarming.
Langford said some of the injuries were sustained when firefighters offered their oxygen masks to evacuating workers–so-called “buddy breathing.”
“Anytime they shared their air, they breathed in some smoke,” Langford said. “That smoke became cumulative.”
As the injured firefighters’ health continued to improve, discussions proceeded at City Hall about a sprinkler ordinance for older commercial high-rises.
That ordinance is expected to win City Council approval next week.
Mayor Richard Daley said Wednesday that sprinklers still could wind up in older residential high-rises as well, but he would not say whether they would be mandatory or optional.
A Daley-backed ordinance would create a fire-safety point system for older condominium and apartment towers. Owners who fall short of the required number of points could select from a menu of improvements–sprinklers would be only one option–to pass muster.
But Daley said sprinklers could be part of the mix in the future, and he disclosed that Fire and Buildings Department officials are investigating innovative and low-cost concepts.
“In the kitchen, can you put one in there?” he asked. “You have water [service] coming in … We are going to be sitting down with the condo owners and saying, `OK, what can we do?'”
Breaking through walls to install traditional sprinklers would be cost-prohibitive in older buildings that have asbestos, Daley said.
“A lot of these people who have condos are not wealthy people,” he said. “They are just hard-working people, so to assess them $25,000 or $50,000 per apartment, that is pretty high. They would say, `$50,000? You just took my life savings away from me,'” Daley said.
Sprinkler installation would be mandatory in older commercial high-rises under a companion ordinance to Daley’s residential measure that also will go before the City Council next week.
Under provisions of a measure passed in 1975, both residential and commercial high-rises built since then have been equipped with sprinklers.
