Also: Witnesses Describe Frantic Scene
CHICAGO (AP) -- Survivors of a deadly high-rise fire testified Monday they told firefighters people were trapped on the stairs -- and said one escape route was closed off by a firefighter who directed evacuees to go up, rather than down, a stairwell.
Evacuees stopped in their descent of the 35-story Cook County administration building went back up _ but did not find an unlocked door leading from the stairwell until the 27th floor, one survivor said.
``I felt like I was going to die. I was absolutely convinced that it was my last few seconds to be alive,'' said Carol Melton, an attorney with the Cook County Public Guardian's office who survived by kneeling and sucking in clean air through a door jamb. ``I was being suffocated.''
When told people were still trapped in the stairs, firefighters' responses conflicted, survivors said. One denied that that was the case. Another said the problem was being worked on.
The testimony came on the first day of commission hearings into the Oct. 17 fire that killed six people -- all of whom died of smoke inhalation in a locked stairwell.
Melton's co-worker, Jill Runk, also an attorney in the public guardian's office, testified she walked from the 19th floor with Melton and three others. She said the group was stopped at the 12th floor by a firefighter who stuck his thumb in the air, motioning them to return to higher floors.
By the time Runk reached the 27th floor, she had lost contact with her co-workers. A firefighter then directed her and others to descend another stairwell. Near the bottom, she told a firefighter: ``I said, 'There are people in that other stairwell that didn't make it to 27.'''
Runk did not remember the firefighter's response. She left the building and also told a fire official her friends were in the southeast stairwell. ``He said, 'No, everyone's out of the building,''' she said.
Office worker Lori Hallberg-Eyman testified she was told during fire drills to go to the 22nd floor where the door would be unlocked. It was locked Oct. 17, she said. When she reached the 27th floor, she said she told a firefighter other people were still trapped.
The firefighter responded ``they were working on it,'' she said.
Cortez Trotter, executive director of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said last week his office could not locate any firefighter who told people to go back up the stairs, but conceded the instruction could have been given.
The agency's spokesman, Larry Langford, and Chicago Fire Department spokesman Kevin MacGregor declined to comment on the hearing.
The city last week released a summary of its own investigation into the fire, finding that an unnecessary evacuation order and firefighters' failure to immediately search every floor for victims contributed to the deaths.
Related
