Two men died Tuesday morning after a fire broke out in a high-rise apartment building in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, the Medical Examiner's Office confirmed.
Names of the victims, one man in his 30s and the other in his 40s, weren't publicly released by 3 p.m. pending notification of family members. A third person, a woman, was seriously injured, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said.
Langford said the two men were in cardiac arrest when taken to the hospital. It wasn't clear whether the they were trapped in the seventh floor unit where the fire began or the unit above it.
About 100 firefighters responded at 8:41 a.m. to the blaze on the 6700 block of South Shore Drive. Flames and smoke were seen pouring out of a window on the seventh floor and climbing upward. The building was not equipped with a sprinkler system.
Helicopter footage of the scene showed at least three residents on balconies around the corner from the fire.
Resident Tyra Glispie and her dog escaped by climbing down 13 flights of stairs.
"I was running down the steps, it's a lot of steps, [and] saw the smoke," Glispie said.
The blaze was upgraded to a 3-11 alarm fire and EMS Plan 2 just at 9:11 a.m. The alarm sends 10 ambulances to the scene.
Chicago fire officials said the blaze was extinguished as of 9:25 a.m.
