Chicago Warehouse Fire and Ice: The January 2013 Bridgeport Blaze

On the night of 22 January 2013, fire tore through a vacant four-storey warehouse at 3757 South Ashland Avenue in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighbourhood. Firefighters poured water on it in below-zero cold, and by morning the building and their equipment were wrapped in thick ice while the fire still smouldered inside.

The Bridgeport warehouse fire

The building was the former Harris Marcus Group warehouse, an old timber-and-brick structure in the Central Manufacturing District at 37th and Ashland, once one of the city’s first office parks. The fire started on Tuesday evening after 9 p.m., when a fire chief driving past saw smoke, turned around and called it in.

It spread fast and jumped to a second building. The commander skipped straight past a fourth alarm and raised it to a 5-11 alarm, then called two special alarms for extra equipment. It was the first 5-11 with two specials in Chicago since the Wirt Dexter Building in the South Loop burned in 2006. About a third of the Chicago Fire Department’s on-duty personnel responded, some 170 firefighters at the peak, and a department helicopter gave commanders an aerial view.

How firefighting water turned to ice

The fire was declared under control at about 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, but it kept burning deep inside the collapsed structure. Crews stayed on, and a deluge unit kept firing about 4,000 gallons (15,000 litres) of water a minute at the building.

In below-zero temperatures, the overspray froze almost as soon as it landed. Icicles hung from walls, ladders and hoses, hydrants froze, and a crust of ice built up over the whole façade. Officials warned that the weight of the ice could bring down more of the weakened walls. Part of the south wall and the roof had already collapsed.

Fighting fire in freezing weather

Winter adds its own hazards to a big fire. Water freezes on ladders, turnout gear and the street, making every surface slippery. The Chicago Transit Authority sent warming buses so crews could rotate in and out of the cold, and city workers salted nearby roads.

One firefighter suffered a back injury and was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition. Unsafe conditions and repeated collapses kept investigators out of the building, so the cause stayed unknown.

Fire inside, ice outside

The ice-coated shell made the warehouse look frozen solid, but the fire inside was not finished. On Thursday it flared up again under the ice, with about 40 firefighters still on scene. A crane was brought in to pull down part of the structure, and by 25 January demolition was under way so crews could reach the last pockets of fire.

Explore more: an interior ice gallery with less certain context; water freezing around a very different structure.

Related reading

• Tom Gill’s Ice-Covered Lake Michigan Lighthouses
• Lake Baikal Ice Percussion with irkDarbuka
• A Car Recovered from an Opening in Lake Ice
• Abraham Lake’s Ice Bubbles: Layers beneath the Surface
• Ten Ice and Snow Designs: Hotels, Sculptures and Experimental Spaces
• Twenty-Three Waterfall Scenes: Winter Ice and a Mineral Lookalike

Sources