Two firefighters were injured during an extra-alarm fire that damaged three homes in the South Chicago neighborhood early Sunday morning.
The fire department was notified of a fire on the 7900 block of South Colfax Avenue about 11:45 p.m., said Cmdr. Sean Flynn, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman.
First responders saw the house was burning and upgraded the response to bring more equipment to the scene.
A couple minutes after the first upgrade, two firefighters briefly went unaccounted for.
"We noticed unsafe conditions and started to pull people out. A couple members got trapped upstairs, so we called mayday and pulled a 2-11," Flynn said.
The 2-11 alarm and mayday alert brought more firefighters and equipment to the scene.
The two missing firefighters were accounted for a few minutes later after the firefighters regrouped, Flynn said.
An Emergency Medical Services Plan 1 was also called, bringing another five ambulances to the scene.
One firefighter was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center for minor burns and smoke inhalation and another slipped on ice and hurt his knee. He was transported to South Shore Hospital.
"The cold weather always impedes our progress," Flynn said. "There were water problems in the beginning. Conditions like this always take a little longer for everything."
Four other people were displaced from neighboring homes that were exposed to the fire, Flynn said. Nobody else was injured.
Copyright 2012 - Chicago Tribune
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
