Skip to content

Explosion at Apartment Complex in South Austin

The Chicago Fire department is on the scene of a reported building explosion at the intersection of N. Central Avenue and W. West End Avenue in the South Austin neighborhood.

Chicago Journal
Chicago Journal
| 3 min read
Explosion at Apartment Complex in South Austin

Update: According to officials, eight people have been taken to local hospitals.

CHICAGO — Eight people were rushed to hospitals after being injured when an explosion Tuesday tore through the top floor of a Chicago apartment building, officials said.

The explosion at the 36-unit, four-story apartment building in the South Austin neighborhood occurred at about 9 a.m., officials said. Chicago Fire Department Deputy Chief Marc Ferman told reporters a few hours later that the department had finished searching for potential victims and was “confident” that nobody remained trapped inside the building, of which much of the top floor had collapsed.

He said technical crews had shored up the upper floors to allow firefighters to search “to make sure we didn't leave any victims underneath any of the debris.”

A cause of the blast had not yet been determined.

Seven of the injured were in the building on the city's West Side when the explosion occurred and one apparently was in a building across the street, Ferman said. Three of the people who were hurt had serious to critical injuries, the department said.

0:00
/

Photographs and video posted on the Chicago Fire Department’s Twitter page showed that much of the top floor was destroyed. Scores of bricks and other debris had fallen onto the street, crushing at least one car and seriously damaging two others.

Several residents said they were home when the explosion rocked the building.

“I was asleep, and all of a sudden there was a loud booming,” Lawrence Lewis, who was asleep at the time, told WGN television. “I woke up to my windows gone, my front door blown open. I just saw smoke, and I ran out of the house. I was asleep. I’m shook up right now.”

Otis Maning, who lives across the street, told the Chicago Sun-Times that he was on his couch watching television when “all of a sudden I hear, `Boom!'”

“My heart almost shot out of my body. ... I saw windows busted open, I saw debris," he added.

Yumika Bady, 25, was also at her home across the street and saw that the blast blew out the back window of her car that was parked nearby.

“It just made my apartment shake,” Bady told The Associated Press.

Chicago police bomb squad and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded to the explosion.


Subscribe to the Chicago Journal


The Chicago Journal needs your support.

At just $20/year, your subscription not only helps us grow, it helps maintain our commitment to independent publishing.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE

If you're already a subscriber and you'd like to send a tip to continue to support the Chicago Journal, which we would greatly appreciate, you can do so at the following link:

Send a tip to the Chicago Journal


Subscribe to the Chicago Journal

Chicago NewsNews

Chicago Journal Twitter

The Chicago Journal is a general interest, digital publication focused on the political, cultural, and economic issues relevant to the city of Chicago and the surrounding metro area.


Related Posts

Maine 19-year-old will plead guilty in Chicago-area mosque attack plot

All three alleged plotters believed in a radical form of Sunni Islam that views the Shiite branch of Islam as nonbelievers, officials said, and had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Maine 19-year-old will plead guilty in Chicago-area mosque attack plot

Jury awards nearly $5M verdict in Chicago police chase crash

The woman who died was being driven home after a family cookout when the crash occurred. Her daughter, a family friend in the passenger seat, and the friend’s 9-year-old grandchild were injured, as were 10 police officers.

Jury awards nearly $5M verdict in Chicago police chase crash

Shots fired at police as two overnight investigations interrupted, prompting emergency calls

Officers were doing a routine street stop when suddenly offenders fired shots from a nearby alley and, later, officers were investigating a homicide when a group began throwing objects at them.

Shots fired at police as two overnight investigations interrupted, prompting emergency calls