The quick thinking and decisive action of an Elk Grove Village man almost certainly saved the lives of his elderly neighbors whose house started on fire late Thursday.
Even their dog survived.
Pat Egan, 48, was returning home to Delphia Court about 10 p.m. when he noticed the fire at the corner house out of the side of his eye.
Flames were rapidly spreading across the wooden overhang above the front door where a brother- and sister-in-law in their 70s lived.
"I threw my stuff down and ran to the house," Egan said. "I went in and started shouting their names. They were sleeping."
Egan doesn't believe he was in the house more than 40 seconds, but that seemed almost more than the man and woman could afford. Both were moving slowly — the man from his bad knees and hip, his sister-in-law from her vain search for her small brown dog.
Egan said he kept shouting at her that there was no time to search for the pet.
"The fire was coming down over the door," he said. "I didn't think too much of the danger going in. Just getting out that door again."
Elk Grove Village firefighters were officially notified of the blaze at 10:02 p.m., Deputy Fire Chief Scott Miller said.
He confirmed the reports of Egan rescuing his neighbors, adding that there would certainly have been a potential risk in entering the house when he did.
Though everyone was safely out before authorities arrived, a police officer did at one point have to stop the woman from trying to re-enter the house for her dog, Miller said.
The animal was found uninjured a short time later.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but the blaze is believed to have begun outside the front of the house, Miller said. As the possibility of an incendiary device has been eliminated, investigators are leaning toward an accidental cause.
The currently uninhabitable house sustained an estimated $100,000 worth of damage to its structure and another $50,000 to its contents.
The residents are now living with the woman's daughter-in-law elsewhere in Elk Grove Village.
"They live together to help each other, and they're very nice people," neighbor Katarina Mikova said of the brother- and sister-in-law.
Egan said he's known them himself about 13 years.
