Unlike some of her neighbors, Toyya Robinson didn’t have to be rescued Friday morning from the rooftop of her burning apartment building in Blue Island. But that doesn’t mean that escaping the blaze wasn’t a harrowing experience.
Robinson, 22, woke up early in the morning smelling smoke. She rolled out of bed, walked to her front door and peeked outside. “I saw smoke and heard people screaming and running outside,” Robinson said several hours later.
By then, Robinson, her boyfriend Quinton Collier and their two young children had been forced to relocate to an apartment across the street. The fire had destroyed their apartment in the two-story, 36-unit complex. All told, more than 20 residents were displaced. The fire was caused by unattended cooking and destroyed the building’s roof, fire officials said.
“I’m still completely shocked,” Collier said, surveying the remains of his charred apartment. “I was here prior to the incident, on the couch with the kids, watching TV. I come back from work and I see this.”
One person was injured in the blaze but was treated and released, according to Blue Island Fire Chief Bob Kopp, who said the fire in the 12100 block of Vincennes Road started at about 4:15 a.m.
Most residents were out of the complex when fire crews arrived, but some were rescued from the roof, Kopp said. Others were awakened and escorted out by firefighters.
Firefighters were forced to fight the blaze in a defensive mode, rescuing people from the roof and then battling a huge fire in the attic. The fire originated in a second-floor apartment kitchen, where someone apparently left a stove turn on and unattended, Kopp said.
The fire burned most of the second floor and went into the attic and took the roof off, Kopp said. All of the second-floor units and some on the first floor were damaged, he said, and it took firefighters about 11/2 hours to put the fire out.
The owner had just bought the building a week ago and is in the process of rehabbing several buildings on Vincennes Road, Kopp said. American Red Cross of Greater Chicago spokesman Gerry Holmes said 14 apartments and 25 to 30 people were affected by the fire, and the Red Cross provided food, clothing and medication to the families of 14 units.
Kopp said 17 neighboring fire departments assisted. Danielle Hanson, Blue Station Apartments assistant property manager, said all the residents who were displaced moved to newly refurbished apartments in a complex across the street that the business owns. She said the apartments that burned down were “bad-looking units” with old appliances, and that the apartments the tenants moved into were “10 times better.”