This is the radio traffic from a 3-11 alarm with a disaster plan 3 at 6531 Lowe in Chicago (2/25/79). This occurred while my dad was chief in the 12th battalion … first thing in the morning. The chief he normally relieved, Bill Foran was acting in the big buggy and had not yet been relieved so he was responding as the division marshal. The captain of truck 20, who had some classic radio replies was Richard Fitzpatrick. The voice of the englewood office was Harry Haddon back in his heyday. This building had super long hallways, masks were barely in use at this time and the people were hanging out all over the place. This was a real dandy. Steve Redick
Sunday evening (3/26/17), at a massive industrial complex that was vacant and in disrepair at 6159 West Dickens Avenue in Chicago. A rubbish type fire deep in the building produced smoke conditions that made interior operations very dangerous. This job took a few hours and required the use of search lines as well as TICs. Not much to see from the outside but some varying smoke conditions. Steve Redick
Took in an unusual response in Chicago on the outbound JFK Expressway at Kimball. A semi truck struck the retaining wall and went over the side on an elevated portion of the roadway. The cab detached from the frame (which remained dangling over the lower roadway) and fell to the street below. The driver was reported as being pinned with both portions of the wreckage on fire.
The driver had been removed and was enroute to the hospital when I arrived. Reportedly he was not pinned, but as you might imagine seriously injured. I observed some of the recovery operations utilizing the large IDOT wrecker as well as a bit of the Lin-Mar wrecker operations. A haz mat response was also utilized due to leaking fuel and fluids on both the upper and lower portions of the incident.
Photos from Steve Redick of the Still & Box Alarm fire at 5348 W. Devon Avenue Sunday night (3/19/17) that involved a grease chute in a restaurant. The building had a truss roof.
