Woman, 81, dead after frozen fire hydrant stalls efforts to extinguish Far South Side blaze
An 81-year-old woman who tried to fight a fire that broke out in her Stony Island Park residence overnight was unable to extinguish it and later died at an area hospital, according to Chicago Fire Department officials — who said they also had trouble battling the blaze, due to frozen water in a nearby fire hydrant.
The fire first was reported around 1:55 a.m. on the 8200 block of South Cornell Avenue on the Far South Side, according to information from the police and fire departments. Paramedics took the woman who was in critical condition to University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead at 2:53 a.m., according to information from the Cook County medical examiner’s office, which had not released information about the woman’s identity as of Tuesday morning.
Firefighters called out additional engines after discovering a fire hydrant near the residence was frozen, said Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department. They also used another hydrant near the building, so there was “no real loss due to that frozen hydrant because they always look for two at the same time,” Langford said.
“The frozen hydrant, that slows things down a little bit, but it did not stop them from getting water on the fire,” he explained.
Water in hydrants typically doesn’t freeze unless temperatures remain below zero for an extended period of time, Langford said. Chicago was under a wind chill advisory Tuesday, but temperatures were forecast in the single digits.
When the temperature drops and stays below zero, the Fire Department often will call the city’s Water Department for help or prepare additional engines, each of which can carry 500 gallons of water, Langford said. They may also preemptively try to force open hydrants by dropping flares to heat them.
The woman was found suffering from cardiac arrest and with third-degree burns over most of her body, according to fire officials. Police spokeswoman Kellie Bartoli said officials originally reported the woman as 82, but later verified her date of birth and confirmed she was 81.
There were no working smoke detectors found at the scene, Langford said. A preliminary report on the fire said it started in the basement, and “there’s some indication that (the woman) was downstairs trying to fight that fire,” he added.
The department planned to hand out smoke detectors near the scene of the fire Tuesday morning, according to fire officials.
Check back for updates.
