Thread: Fire horror roils Rogers Park

Fire horror roils Rogers Park
September 4, 2006

BY SHAMUS TOOMEY, ANNIE SWEENEY AND MARK J. KONKOL Staff Reporters




They came from Mexico for a better life, but surviving in Chicago was a struggle for the ever-expanding Ramirez family.

The children worked odd jobs and minded each other while their parents toiled at a nearby laundry. With 10 kids to care for, the parents sought help -- tutoring for their children, financial assistance to pay the rent -- from some of the many social service agencies in their Rogers Park neighborhood.

But finances were apparently still so tight that the electricity was cut off in May, and they lit their three-bedroom apartment with candles. Fire officials now think that one of the candles might have touched off a fast-moving fire that killed half of Amado and Augusta Ramirez' children.



A terrible toll: Children die in many of city's worst blazes
Children were victims in most of the city's deadliest fires in recent years. Following are the locations and tolls of some of the worst fatal blazes of the last 13 years.

March 2006: In the 5200 block of South Honore, four children ages 2 to 9.

September 2004: In the 5000 block of West Huron, four children ages 14 months to 15 years old.

October 2003: Cook County Administration Building, 69 W. Washington, 6 adults.

March 2001: In the 6000 block of South Indiana, two children ages 7 months and 4 years old, and four adults.

Oct. 25, 1997: In the 2500 block of South California, four children ages 3 to 13, and two adults.

March 20, 1994: In the 900 block of West Dakin, four children ages 5 to 15, and three adults.

March 16, 1993: At the Paxton Hotel, 1432 N. La Salle, 20 adults.

Art Golab

The deaths came despite heroic efforts by neighbors who kicked in doors and firefighters who pulled one child out of a third-floor window at 7706 N. Marshfield.

Killed in the fire were Kevin, 3; Suzette, 10; Eric, 12; Idaly, 6, and Vanessa, 14, along with Escarlet Ramos, 3, who was being baby-sat at the house, friends said. William Ramirez, 7, was at Loyola University Hospital, said family friends, but his condition was not known late Sunday. Natali, 16, was in critical condition at University of Chicago Hospitals, they said.

"Why didn't they say something to me" about their power being turned off, said Beatrice Hutcherson, a social worker who knows the family. "All this time. Since May? I am sad and hurt and mad all at the same time. That is something that could have been resolved."

Teachers cry at the news



Amado and Augusta Ramirez came to Chicago together from Mexico about 15 years ago, family and friends said. They had 10 children, including the youngest, a 3-month-old girl. Their oldest daughter, Delia, was 19 and was not living at home. Another teenager, Yadira, 17, was not home during the fire, friends said.

There were seven girls, including the baby. Four children -- Eric, Suzette, William and Idaly -- attended Stephen F. Gale Academy, across the street from their home.

Vanessa had just graduated eighth grade and would have attended high school, friends said. Natali was starting her junior year at Amundsen High School, and Yadira and Delia graduated from Mather High School, friends said.

While some of the family's struggles were known to their friends and to social workers, so too were their triumphs. Teachers at Gale recalled how Eric battled all last year to reverse a D grade in math. By the end of the year, he earned an A, Principal Rudi Lubov said.

"They worked hard, and they pulled together as a family," Lubov said. "And they were able to overcome a lot of the problems they had in their environment."

Gale teachers, some of whom wept Sunday as they heard the news, said the younger kids watched out for each other and the Ramirez girls were the backbone.

"They were united," agreed Dianna Calvente, 21, an HIV prevention counselor at Howard Area Community Center. "They were like [a] second mom to those kids."

Natali and Vanessa, along with Delia, volunteered at the community center as HIV peer educators. For their work, they were paid a $75 monthly stipend, at least some of which they gave to their parents, Hutcherson said.

They also volunteered for other projects at the center, including food delivery. The girls also regularly baby-sat to earn money, Hutcherson said.

Several children were tutored at Family Matters, a social service agency on their block.

Neighbor saves child



Outside the apartment building Sunday, a small shrine was built along a wrought-iron fence. Behind the fence was a massive heap of the family's belongings, now blackened and charred by the fire: a television, a baby carrier, a baby bib and a pair of pink jeans -- the back pocket decorated with pink roses. Two pieces of children's clothing hung on tree branches above.

The blaze broke out shortly after midnight Sunday in the large, red brick structure -- the family's home for eight years -- in an often-troubled pocket of Rogers Park that extends north of Howard Street.

Myron Hall, 27, was asleep in the second-floor apartment directly beneath the blaze when his girlfriend smelled smoke and woke him up.

"I heard stomping, real loud," Hall said. "People screaming, stomping. I said it must be upstairs."

It was right about then that neighbor Albert Tillman arrived, charging up the front stairs. He ran into the pitch-black apartment, following the sound of a child's cries.

"You couldn't see anything. The smoke was real, real rough. You could barely breathe," Tillman said. "The sound led me to him. I grabbed him right under the arm. I carried him down."

Neighbors also charged up the back stairs to the third-floor back porch landing and found the children's mother. She was cradling her youngest and "freaking out," Hall said.

"We asked her, 'How many kids are in the house?'" he said. "She kept saying, 'Eight! Eight!' She kept saying, 'My kids! My kids!' She kept pointing at the door because she couldn't speak English."

Hall said he couldn't figure out why the mother was outside the door, which neighbors were trying to break down.

"There were all types of neighbors with fire extinguishers, but you couldn't get past the door," he said. "The door wouldn't open. We were kicking the door. . . . People were trying to get in, but there was nothing you could do."

The neighbors finally kicked it in but were driven back by the searing heat and flames.

Meanwhile, in the front of the building, which sits at the corner of Jonquil Terrace and Marshfield Avenue, other neighbors watched terrified children gathered at the windows and even encouraged some to jump into a blanket.

The Chicago Fire Department got the first call about the blaze at 12:19 a.m., and the first responding crews were at the scene in three minutes, department spokesman Larry Langford said.

Truck 25 extended its main ladder with a firefighter at the tip and rescued one child. A primary search team went in through the front door of the building and quickly found five children together in the front area of the apartment, Langford said.

Neighbors watched as firefighters carried the children out of the building and laid them out in a makeshift triage on the sidewalk in front of the children's school.

"What do you say?" said a stunned Chicago Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco, who was at the scene. "There's nothing you can say. It's been the worst in a long time. The only thing you can do is just pray for these poor people."

Received rental assistance



A cousin of Amado Ramirez said both husband and wife worked at a dry cleaners/ laundry in Edgewater. Family friends said Augusta also had worked cleaning houses. Unemployment was simply not an option.

The family received rental assistance from the Howard Area Community Center, said Ald. Joe Moore (49th). Moore, in whose ward the Ramirezes reside, said Sunday he wished they had called to ask for help with their utility bills.

Calvente said she heard of the problem about the electricity being turned off from one of the older sisters, and she told Natali about a funding program that could help. ComEd officials confirmed the family's electricity was disconnected in May but declined to discuss the reason.

Hutcherson recalled how, just recently, Natali called her to ask if she could borrow a portable television but said it had to be battery-operated.

"I asked her, 'What do you need [such] a TV for?'" Hutcherson said. "It didn't dawn on me that maybe that could have been a reason."

Smoke detectors?



Neighbors of the Ramirezes said the family had run extension cords to hallway electrical sockets and had also asked to run lines into their neighbors' units.

They were rebuffed.

Sunday, the building's owner said he did not know the family had their electricity cut.

"It's just a horrible tragedy that is beyond words," Jay Johnson said. "The loss. I am numb. I mourn for the family. I mourn for everyone involved in this situation."

Fire Department officials said investigators found no evidence of working smoke detectors. But Johnson said the entire building was outfitted with detectors that were tied to the main electrical system.

He was checking Sunday to see whether the power being turned off in the Ramirezes' unit would have shut down their smoke detectors.

Johnson, who owns seven buildings in the neighborhood and serves on Moore's zoning advisory committee, said the Marshfield Avenue building was the subject of two inspections this year, and that it passed one.

Eight minor maintenance violations were found on the second inspection -- the annual city inspection -- according to Moore's office. There is a hearing on the infractions scheduled later this month.

Contributing: Frank Main

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-fire04.html

I think these parents should be charged with child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter. Their actions and theirs alone caused their children to die a horrible death by fire. I noticed the mother didnt have any trouble getting out to safety! Sorry, my compassion is for the children who were left to burn in that stinking apartment, begging for someone to help them get out.

http://www.belleville.com/mld/bellevill ... 434394.htm

6 children die in apartment fire

By Gerry Doyle, Ofelia Casillas and Matthew Walberg

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

CHICAGO - Without electricity since May, the impoverished immigrant family living on the third floor of the brick apartment building in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood was using candles for light. It was a dangerous option that proved to be deadly early Sunday.

About 12:20 a.m., one of the candles started the blaze that quickly moved through the three-bedroom apartment, killing six children ranging in age from 3 years old to 14 years old, Chicago Fire Department officials said. It was the city's highest toll of children killed in a single fire since 1964.

"What do you say?" an emotional Chicago Fire Commissioner Ray Orozco said early Sunday. "It's been the worst in a long time. The only thing you can do is just pray for these poor people."

The dead were identified as Kevin Ramirez, 3, Suzette Ramirez, 10, Eric Ramirez, 12, Idaly Ramirez, 6, Vanessa Ramirez, 14, and Escarlet Ramos, 3.

The mother of five of the children, Augusta Tellez, 43, was hospitalized and released. The father, Amado Ramirez, was absent from the home at the time of the fire, Orozco said. Altogether, nine children were in the apartment with Tellez and Ramirez. Eight of the children were theirs, fire officials said.

Orozco maintained that the gutted apartment had no smoke detectors, but the landlord said each unit was wired with the detectors at the time the tenants moved there.

Robert McClendon was visiting a cousin in the neighborhood when he noticed the odor of smoke and walked into the alley between his cousin's building and the apartment. He saw flames in the third-floor kitchen and a woman in the alley yelling, "My kids, my kids," McClendon, 33, said.

McClendon said he ran up stairs at the rear of the building. When he reached the top, he heard children screaming.

"I can't see them, but I can hear them," McClendon said. "I was down there with a flashlight, trying to peer through the smoke."

But the flames and heat forced him back, he said.

A friend of McClendon's was able to pull one child from the burning building.

Myron Hall, 27, who lives beneath the Ramirez apartment, was awakened by the smell of smoke and heard running feet and screaming. Someone kicked in his door, looking for victims. Hall raced into the smoke-filled hall and tried to get upstairs.

"I put my shirt over my face," he said, adding that another man was running down the stairs carrying a child. "But it was way too much smoke."

When firefighters arrived, they saw smoke billowing from the third-floor apartment and residents leaning out windows looking for help, Orozco said. One of those was a boy on the third floor, whom they plucked after extending a ladder up to him, the fire commissioner said.

In all, eight people were rescued, Orozco added.

It was the worst death toll of children in a single residential fire in Chicago since Feb. 21, 1964, when seven children and an adult were killed in a fire at the home of a city police detective.

Previously this year, four multiple-death residential fires have occurred in Chicago. In March, three South Side girls were killed in a house fire. Another blaze in the Back of the Yards neighborhood killed four children later that month. Two men were killed in a West Side apartment fire in July, and a husband and wife died when fire consumed their two-story graystone in Lincoln Park on July 29.

And of the 29 fire deaths recorded this year in Chicago, all of them occurred in places without smoke detectors or without working smoke detectors.

Orozco and Chicago Alderman Joe Moore, who represents the Rogers Park neighborhood where the fire occurred, said the blaze underscores the importance of the devices. Less than 12 hours after the children's bodies were removed from the apartment, three fire trucks rolled into the neighborhood to distribute free smoke detectors.

"This is an absolutely horrible tragedy," Moore said Sunday after walking through the building. "It really highlights the need for everyone to have smoke detectors in their home."

City code requires landlords to install the detectors, but tenants are responsible for maintaining them or alerting landlords of a malfunction.

"When the investigation is complete, if it is found that a building code violation contributed to these deaths," Moore said, "they will be held accountable."

The owner of the building, developer Jay D. Johnson, owns seven buildings in Moore's ward and has coordinated several projects there, including the redevelopment of the Howard Theater into residences and businesses, Moore said. Johnson also serves as one of 18 volunteers on Moore's zoning and land use advisory council.

In a cell phone interview Sunday night, the developer said all his apartments have working smoke detectors when a tenant signs a lease. He noted that the Ramirez unit had working detectors when the family moved there in 1998.

Johnson also said building representatives explain to tenants how to use the smoke detectors and the tenants' responsibilities, which are to report malfunctioning or missing smoke detectors to the landlord.

All the smoke detectors in the building are hard-wired to the electrical system, Johnson said. He added that he believed that each was wired to the individual tenants' power and that each detector has a battery backup.

In September 2005, Johnson's company inspected its apartment units, including the victims' apartment, he said. At that time, smoke detectors were in that unit, Johnson said, but he and staff were reviewing records to determine whether they had recorded problems with those detectors.

In addition, the Chicago Department of Health and Building Department inspected the building in the spring and summer of this year, Johnson said. The building was given a clean bill of health by both departments, he said, though he was unsure whether the victims' apartment had been inspected because the spot checks are random.

Toni Duncan, a resident of the ward who maintains a Web site called Howardwatchers, in which she chronicles alleged questionable practices at Johnson's properties, said residents and neighbors say he fails to keep up his buildings.

Johnson rejected the criticism. A check of property and business records and court filings Sunday showed no major citations or litigation among Johnson's holdings.

"I don't want to address any one person's perspective other than to say that our objective is quality housing," Johnson said, "as witnessed by the fact that this building has been inspected two times in the last year and has been found with no code violations."

"Our condolences go out to the family," Johnson added. "It's a horrible tragedy for everybody - for the family, for the neighborhood, for the city. We mourn the fact that this situation happened. I'm just trying to do whatever we can to help the family."

As the hours passed Sunday, crews showed up to board apartment windows and a makeshift memorial of flowers and a Teddy Bear took shape at the base of the decorative iron fence around the building.

Neighbors, many speechless, tears in their eyes, recalled the Ramirez children as friendly, bright and creative, despite enduring harsh economic hardship.

Stephen Brown, a fourth-grade teacher at Stephen F. Gale Community Academy, where the Ramirezes attended, said the kids were very well behaved.

"The mother was very hard working," said Brown, who added that he has known the family for 15 years. "She had to face a life of economic hardship, but she really did put the kids first in every way."

It is sad the children lost their lives. It brings up a host of issues though. They were illegal. Both parents were working and getting assistance. They were here for many years and didn't speak English. The children were in an unsafe situation and who's the person who left their child there to spend the night with no electricity? Neighbors knew because they were running extensions cords to their apartments. The landlord is renting to illegals. That's too many people for that size apartment.

There are many citizens who are in that same situation. When 2 adults can't make ends meet, with assistance, in the cheapest place they can find to live......something is wrong. Which is why we don't need more illegal immigrants. Even more legals for that matter. There are over 10,000 homeless children in Chicago and Daley wants more. Don't tell me we need them. Don't tell me the economy is booming. Don't tell me there's a labor shortage when how many of us here are looking for jobs? Too many jobs aren't paying a living wage. And I certainly know more taxes isn't going to fix it. Must speak "Spanish" isn't. More people isn't.

McClendon said he ran up stairs at the rear of the building. When he reached the top, he heard children screaming.

"I can't see them, but I can hear them," McClendon said. "I was down there with a flashlight, trying to peer through the smoke."

I just can't past this, as hard as I try.