Six Die in Downtown Chicago Fire

CHICAGO (AP) — Six people were killed Friday in an extra-alarm fire that trapped workers in smoke-filled stairways and hallways of a Cook County administration building in the heart of downtown, officials said.

The dead were among 13 victims overcome by smoke who were not discovered until after the fire had been brought under control and firefighters were conducting a floor-by-floor search of the 35-story building. Some of those trapped had called 911 on their cellular phones.

“Searching for all those people, at the same time fighting the fire is more complicated than it looks from the outside,” Fire Commissioner James Joyce said.

Joyce said that the people that died appeared to be from one stairwell around the 22nd floor.

Joyce said it is not unusual to find more people in the later stages of a fire in a 35-story building that can hold as many as 2,500 people during business hours.

A foot-by-foot search of the building was completed about five hours after the fire was first reported at 5:03 p.m.

Authorities said 12 people were treated at area hospitals and some were in serious and critical condition.

Joyce said he did not know how the fire got started in the building, which has an alarm system but no sprinklers. The fire broke out in the 12th floor housing Illinois Secretary of State offices, and workers there said they first saw smoke coming from a storage room.

Homebound commuters in the Loop business district looked up to see flames and dense gray smoke pouring from the 12th-story windows of the building that houses county and state offices. The blaze snarled rush-hour traffic and forced subway commuters to bypass underground tunnels.

The fire was extinguished by 175 firefighters working with hoses inside the building and a snorkel truck that poured water through the windows. Firefighters rushed out of the building with victims on stretchers with oxygen masks on their faces.