Neighbors help residents flee apartment fire: 'You can literally feel the heat'

Jaleesa Carlisle was sleeping in her Lawndale home, the windows open on a cool summer night, when heat and smoke woke her up early Friday.

"You can literally feel the heat because my windows were open," Carlisle said. "You can literally feel the heat coming in, you know, with the smoke. I'm like, is it my building?"

She looked out the window and saw flames coming from a nearby apartment building in the 1800 block of South Avers Avenue. She dressed and ran outside to make sure everyone made it out.

"I had to do something," she said.

Carlisle and another man began yelling for the residents to get out. A woman who lived in the building handed her a child while the woman grabbed a second child, Carlisle said.   "They were a bit shaken," she said.

The West Side residents got out safely, but a firefighter suffered burns battling the blaze, which started about 5:15 a.m. Friday in the back porch of the third-floor apartment, according to the Chicago Fire Department. The fire was contained to the unit and was struck out by 5:45 a.m.

The firefighter was taken in good condition to Mount Sinai Hospital, the department said.

The cause of the fire remained under investigation.

Robert Harper, who lives in the building and manages it, said there are 15 units in the building. Standing outside, he wasn't sure how many families would be displaced because he had not been able to go in to check the damage.

One person lived in the apartment where the fire took place, he said.

Harper said he was sleeping when the sound of people yelling made him look out of his window. He saw something bright.  "I jumped up and ran to the back door and opened the door," he said. "There, it was coming out the windows and I was like, 'Oh man.' "

He left the building and later searched among the crowd for the building's tenants.