The Failures Before the Fires: Read the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation
This yearlong investigation, a collaboration between the Chicago Tribune and the Better Government Association, revealed that at least 61 people died in residential fires in Chicago where officials were aware of fire hazards in the buildings but failed to ensure they were addressed.
Reporters also uncovered a convoluted system of informal rules, outdated records and lax oversight that put the interests of landlords above the safety of tenants. Residents’ complaints of dangerous housing conditions went unaddressed, and landlords were given a pass for life-threatening issues at all steps of the code enforcement process, reporters found. Many of the city’s failures directly contributed to the fire deaths. The lax oversight disproportionately harmed Black renters.
The investigation also examined the 150-year history of empty political rhetoric and broken promises that has followed fire disasters going all the way back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Follow-up stories showcased the ways other cities have sought to improve housing conditions for all, laying out clear avenues for significant change that would make Chicago a safer place to live.
This powerful and painstaking investigation has earned the Chicago Tribune and the Better Government Association the highest honor in journalism: a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.
Published in April 2021, the nearly two-year investigation — disrupted by the pandemic — dug deep into data and then fleshed out the stories behind the numbers with compassion and color, shining a light on an ongoing tragedy and the impact of local reporting.
Part one: 61 deaths, 42 fires, a broken system
From 2014 through 2019, Chicago suffered 140 fatal residential fires. The Tribune and the BGA examined every one.
In 42 of the fires, reporters found, officials had prior knowledge of fire safety issues that remained unresolved at the time the flames broke out.
The 61 people who died in these fires represent about a third of the 170 deaths in all the fires combined. The majority were Black.
Responsibility for these failures lies with the city’s elected leaders, who cut back on inspections, eased regulations and failed to follow through on promises of reform after headline-making tragedies; with city lawyers and hearing officers who deferred to property owners; and with front-line inspectors and their bosses at the Department of Buildings — an agency created after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 specifically to prevent fire-related tragedies.
Part two: Deadly fires, broken promises
In a city scarred by a long history of tragic fires, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and the Better Government Association found political rhetoric about strict enforcement repeatedly gave way to broken promises, watered-down regulations and abandoned reforms.
After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Joseph Medill was elected on the “fireproof” ticket but caved on his most ambitious plans. In 1958, when 92 children and three nuns died as the result of a Catholic school fire, the City Council pushed back deadlines for one of the first serious fire sprinkler mandates. And in 2003, when six died in a Loop high-rise, the City Council demanded that sprinklers be installed in tall buildings but exempted many older structures.
More recently, Chicago officials backed off their long-standing opposition to tamper-proof smoke detectors, but many property owners won’t be fined for violations for more than a decade — a move that puts the city well behind the rest of the state. They also drastically cut the number of required building inspections in favor of a complaint-based system that puts the onus on tenants to report their own landlords.
Behind each fire, a sad story
Some homes lacked smoke detectors or heat in wintertime. Some were overcrowded or didn’t have enough exits. People died in abandoned buildings the city failed to secure or demolish.
As part of “The Failures Before the Fires,” reporters compiled details on each of the 42 deadly fires where they found city officials had known about fire safety problems but failed to act in time.
How we reported this investigation
The reporters’ goal was to identify the number of cases in which city officials had prior warning of fire safety issues that later started fatal fires or otherwise hindered the victims’ chances of survival. In the end, 42 of the 140 fatal fires met the criteria.
Chicago’s history: Lessons unheeded
When a Chicago fire makes headlines, politicians often push for new safety standards. Sometimes these reforms made life safer, but frequently the city faltered in the face of opposition and the conditions left in place led to more preventable disasters.
Today, many of the city’s safety requirements still have their roots in these notorious fires, but Chicago politicians’ failures to take stronger action left many residents vulnerable to another fatal blaze.
Advocates to Lightfoot: Policies need fixing
Tenant advocates and public officials called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to hold landlords more accountable and establish clear rules on how the city handles housing safety complaints after a Better Government Association and Chicago Tribune investigation revealed that known hazards were allowed to go unfixed, sometimes for years, before fatal fires.
9 actions Chicago could take
To find potential fixes for Chicago’s failures, the BGA and Tribune examined practices in the nation’s 20 most populated cities, including reforms prompted by tragedy.
They found nine things other cities are doing to make buildings safer for their citizens, from scheduling inspections and licensing landlords to creating a “fix-it” court.
New ‘scofflaw’ list omits unsafe buildings
Chicago’s new building safety “scofflaw list” excludes hundreds of properties where city officials found life-threatening housing violations, the Tribune and the Better Government Association found. At the time it was published, only 98 properties were on the list.
The criteria for the list — designed largely to shame property owners into action — leave out many buildings the city has taken to court over safety problems as well as buildings officials consider to be vacant, among other omissions.