20 Years Ago Today, Deadly Heat Wave Gripped Chicago
(CBS) -- Twenty years ago today, Chicago was in the middle of a heat wave that killed more than 730 people over five days.
Most of the dead were elderly. The poor who could not afford air conditioning and kept their windows closed, many afraid of the neighborhoods where they lived.
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Fire Department Spokesman Larry Langford was a police and fire street reporter for WMAQ Radio in 1995.
He remembers hearing all the calls for ambulances. At first.
"As the heat continued, they stopped asking for ambulances," he said. "They asked for wagons because then they were removing people and we heard that over and over again."
They were taking out the dead in all parts of the city.
"Many of these victims come from Chicago's North Side where power outages over the weekend knocked out air conditioning to apartments and condos."
The late Ted Hampson was a reporter here at WBBM in 1995.
"...Beat 2372 in the Town Hall police district up there - that's the wagon assigned to pick up bodies: 'It reminds me of Vietnam. All the bodies like that,' (one officer said. And another:) Very similar to being in a combat-like situation, the way we've been hauling bodies.'"
