Chicago Firefighters : 2 Killed, 16 Injured

Chicago Fire same day after 100 years

2 firefighters were killed and 16 others were injured — 6 critically, while fighting a fire  in a vacant burning building on Chicago’s South Side on Wednesday. 

The vacant site was  an abandoned dry cleaners place. The fire started at about 7 a.m. local time.

The one-story building, which was more than half a century old, had been vacant for years and the utilities had been turned off.  The  firefighters went in to  searched it because  of their concern that homeless people might be trapped inside after starting the blaze to stay warm.
Then the roof and a wall suddenly collapsed. Four firefighters were trapped under debris, two could be rescued and two of them died.

The men killed were Edward Stringer, 47, a 12-year veteran firefighter and Corey Ankum, 34, who joined the department a little over a year ago. They and two others were trapped under the roof debris.  Two firefighters were pulled out quickly but rescuers had to use extrication equipment to reach Stringer and Ankum.

Exactly 100 years ago, 21 Chicago firefighters died when a wall collapsed at the Union Stock Yards fire. It was  one of the nation's worst tragedies for firefighters before 9/11 and among the most somber on the Chicago Fire Department's calendar.

"We were ringing the bell and calling out the names," said retired fireman Bill Cosgrove, who was at a service honoring the anniversary. "We heard a mayday on the radio that a wall had fallen in. It was beyond disbelief. It was a matter of a few hours and a hundred years later we have the same type of incident."

Is  it  an irony of  fate? 

Exactly 100 years after a fire breaks out and here also a wall collapses to kill the firefighters.