SOMETIMES, TIMING IS EVERYTHING. That was the case Sunday afternoon around 2 pm when a fire started on the 28th floor of a Chicago, Illinois, apartment building. At that same moment, an off-duty Chicago firefighter was nearby working at his part-time job driving a private ambulance. For some fateful reason he looked up at the top of the building and saw smoke starting to seep out of the upper-floor windows.
Chicago Tribune / Arroyava photo
The Chicago Tribune tells what happened next:
Jason Durbin, 33, an off-duty firefighter, said he was working a side job driving an ambulance for a private company. He was driving south on Clark Street after grabbing a hot dog when he looked up and saw smoke billowing out of a unit near the top of the building.
Durbin said that he ran up 28 flights to the [fire] floor and found [a] woman conscious about half way down the smokey hallway.
She was in the fetal position overcome with smoke, he said. He grabbed the woman and put her on his back, piggyback style, and carried her down to the ground floor, said Durbin who joined the department 15 months ago and said this was his first rescue.
“It was just all adrenalin,” Durbin told the Sun-Times. “The minute I hit the ground [floor], it was just “Thank God.”
The woman who is believed to be in her 50′s lived alone in the apartment and is in the hospital this morning in serious condition with smoke inhalation and burns. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but it did not spread beyond her apartment. The CFD had the fire out in about 30 minutes.
WFLD-TV Ch. 32 talks to Durbin in this report from the fireground:
Read the Chicago Tribune report HERE.
More from the Sun-Times HERE.
WGN-TV has more video:
Also on FireGeezer…
- 2 FF’s Injured in Fatal High-Rise Fire in Chicago – January 8, 2012
- Chicago’s First Multi-Alarm of 2011 – January 2, 2011
- Chicago FF’s Trapped in Attic – 3 Critical – August 26, 2011
- Fatal High-Rise Fire in France – July 27, 2011
