Two Chicago firefighters fell through a kitchen floor Thursday evening during a house fire near East 90th Street and South Martin Luther King Drive. The fall prompted a Mayday.
Chicago Fire Department officials said the fire started in the basement and that the two firefighters and a resident were injured. Both firefighters were taken to a hospital and listed in good condition. WGN-TV reported that the fire was called in around 6 p.m. and that the person who lived in the house was also hospitalized and expected to be okay. The cause is under investigation.
Through the Kitchen Floor
WGN described a hole in the kitchen floor of a home near the West Chesterfield neighborhood. Fire officials placed the fire near East 90th and South Martin Luther King Drive in Chatham, and said the firefighters went through that floor into the basement.
Officials tied the Mayday to the fall itself. The latest word on the firefighters was that they were in good condition. The resident's outlook, as WGN reported it, was that the person was expected to be okay.
A Familiar Chicago Hazard
Thursday's fire is a separate incident, but floor and porch failures have already put Chicago firefighters into basements.
On March 16, FireRescue1 reported, a firefighter fell through a first-floor apartment floor into a burning basement during a search and died the next morning. Investigators found the seat of the fire in the basement, directly below the bedroom where the firefighter had been searching.
At another fire, a collapsed porch on a vacant home sent two firefighters into the basement during a two-alarm blaze. They called a Mayday and came away with minor injuries, FireRescue1 reported.
A further house-fire Mayday put two firefighters in the hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, one transported code green and the other code yellow. FireRescue1 described that Monday call as Chicago's second Mayday at a fire in less than a week, after six firefighters were hospitalized on Friday, Feb. 19.
The South Side crew that went through the kitchen floor Thursday was reported in good condition. What started the basement fire is still an open question.
