Three, Including Firefighter, Injured During Fire In Buena Park
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Three people, including a Chicago firefighter, were hospitalized after an extra-alarm fire broke out at an apartment building in the Buena Park neighborhood.
CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports more than 100 firefighters responded to the 2-11 alarm fire on the fifth floor of an apartment building at 736 W. Buena Av.
The fire broke out around 9:25 a.m.
As heavy flames and smoke erupted from some of the windows on the fifth floor, a Chicago firefighter used an aerial ladder to rescue a man who had become trapped in his apartment.
Jennifer Sheahen caught the rescue on home video after she woke up to hear someone shouting to call 911. She said she was still in bed across the street when she heard the shouting.
"So, before I even looked outside, I was dialing, and when I looked outside, I saw the flames shooting out of the building," she said. "And then I ran downstairs immediately, looked outside again, and then there was a man waving his arms out the window, trying to get out."
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Sheahen said firefighters arrived within a few minutes and put a ladder up to rescue the man.
The man who was rescued, Sammy Redmond, said he got trapped after knocking on neighbors' doors to warn them about the fire, then briefly going back into his own apartment to put some clothes on.
"When I was getting ready to come back out, I couldn't get out. I couldn't see anything, and I said I'm not going back out there. It was dark, it was pitch dark," he said.
After firefighters raised a ladder to his window, he was able to slide down the ladder on his own.
"I had no other way to get out," he said. "I never had this experience, but I'm glad I'm okay. I've never seen anything like this at all."
Firefighter Mike Kirkpatrick, who was the one who climbed the ladder to get to Redmond's window, said, "The guy was halfway out the window when we got up there. We helped him the rest of the way out, walked him down the ladder."
Sheahen said several women who had run out of the burning apartment building were still in their pajamas when they got outside, "so I went inside and grabbed some blankets and wrapped them as well."
Two women were taken to Weiss Memorial Hospital; one was in good to fair condition, the other was in fair to serious condition.
The man who was rescued was treated at the scene.
A firefighter was also taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in fair condition, to be checked out as a precaution, according to the Fire Department. It was not immediately clear what type of injury the firefighter had suffered.
There was no word late Wednesday morning on what caused the fire.
