Tinley Park, IL (February 22, 2024) – Eight people were hospitalized following a fire in a 14-story Chicago high-rise building at 7144 S. Jeffery Boulevard that lacked fire sprinklers. One of those hospitalized was an infant in critical condition. The fire started in a kitchen of a second-floor unit in the 1920s-era high-rise and moved its way into an interior stairwell, sending extreme heat up multiple stories and smoke billowing to the highest floors of the building.
According to the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board (NIFSAB), fire sprinklers would have stopped the fire and heavy smoke from spreading throughout the building, which created a tense scene for responding firefighters who made numerous rescues for residents hanging out windows on upper floors. Even on the fourth floor, a resident jumped to avoid the smoke.
The building was constructed prior to the 1975 City of Chicago Municipal Code requiring fire sprinkler systems. Following the fatal Cook County Administration Building fire of 2003, the city instituted a Life Safety Evaluation (LSE) program for all pre-1975 residential high-rise buildings, but buildings could pass without retrofitting fire sprinklers.
“This building, along with more than 600 others passed the city’s LSE by merely installing passive fire protection measures, nothing that actually controls or extinguishes a fire,” says NIFSAB Executive Director Erik Hoffer. “Passive measures, such as self-closing doors, rely on the concept of compartmentation, which attempts to keep a fire confined to a single space. Yet, without a fire sprinkler system suppressing the fire, compartmentation is not enough to protect residents and responding firefighters. This South Shore high-rise fire exhibits the failures of the city’s weak LSE.”
“And while the cost of sprinklers is often cited as an obstacle to installing them, the toll that fires take in lives, injuries, property losses, and long-term displacements far outweighs the expenditure,” adds Hoffer.
This is the fourth reported fire this year in a Chicago residential high-rise that is not protected with fire sprinklers. Last year, 17 residential high-rise fires that resulted in deaths to a resident and Chicago firefighter, injuries, millions of dollars in property loss, and the disruption of peoples’ lives.
Visit www.highriselifesafety.com/high-rise-fires-in-2023 to view a map and details about the impact of each of the 17 unsprinklered Chicago residential high-rise fires of 2023.
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