Lessons From Fatal Fire Aided New Rescue Effort

CHICAGO —  Lessons learned in a deadly 2003 high-rise fire may have saved lives when a blaze broke out on the 29th floor of a downtown skyscraper, fire officials said Tuesday.

Six people died in last year’s fire at a county government building, prompting authorities to overhaul many rescue techniques. Their reforms were put to the test Monday as flames began shooting from windows at LaSalle Bank’s corporate headquarters.

As workers huddled inside, hundreds of firefighters went to work against the fire, but a team rushed into the building with another job: finding workers trapped by smoke and flames.

The fire burned for 5 1/2 hours Monday night, and more than 30 people were injured -- most of them firefighters -- but none died.

Authorities credited the new rescue tactics with saving lives but said they were also fortunate that stairwell doors in the 43-story building stayed unlocked and that many workers listened to firefighters’ instructions and remained in place.

“The lights were out and it was pitch black, and the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. But at every landing there was a fireman keeping us moving,” said Jim Rubens, a who was rescued after about 40 minutes of sitting on the floor, the only place workers could find air to breathe.

The Fire Department continued to search for clues Tuesday about the cause of the fire that started on the 29th floor and spread to the 30th.

Workers reported confusion, complaining that they sometimes could not get through to fire officials by phone and could not always make out instructions broadcast in the hallways. Many remained behind doors they dared not open for fear of letting in more smoke.

But it was clear that firefighters had learned from the October 2003 fire at the Cook County administration building, where victims’ bodies were found in a stairwell 90 minutes after firefighters arrived.

This time, members of a “rapid ascent team” arrived knowing that their only mission would be to search for trapped occupants.

“They start going up and down stairwells and floor by floor, searching from top to bottom,” department spokesman Larry Langford said.

Of the 450 department personnel on the scene, as many as 75 did nothing but search for people inside, Commissioner Cortez Trotter said.

The effort led to the finding of dozens of workers who, as stairwells and hallways filled with smoke, could only close office doors, stuff jackets and rags along the edges to keep out smoke and call 911.

A few weeks after the 2003 fire, in which people perished in stairwells after doors locked behind them, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance requiring those doors to remain unlocked. The building also had windows that could be opened, unlike the county building.