CHICAGO — The Chicago Fire Department determined Monday that a fire in Woodlawn killed two young girls and left three others injured, including a 6-year-old boy, on Saturday started because the stove was being used to heat the apartment.
At 10:30 p.m. Saturday, officials were called to a fire at a home in the 6600 block of South Champlain Avenue, police said.
Officials found the bodies of two girls in the basement of the home, police said. They were pronounced dead at the scene.
The children were identified as 7-month-old Ziya Grace, and 2-year-old Samari Grace by the coroner's office. Family members told the Tribune that the coroner's office misspelled Samari's name.
A 6-year-old boy was taken to Comer Children's Hospital in critical condition.
Ernestine Franklin, 48, and Zakkiya Franklin, 35, were taken to University of Chicago Medicine, where their conditions were not available but they were listed as "stable," police said.
Jimmie Hampton, Ernestine's brother and Zakkiya's uncle and the owner of the building, said Monday that he visited the women and the 6-year-old in the hospital and said their condition had not improved.
"They're not doing well," Hampton said.
Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department, said the 6-year-old was found by firefighters gasping for breath on the floor in the living room of the apartment .
He said the boy has second-degree burns on 75 percent of his body.
"If they had not gotten the boy out of there in another minute, he would not have made it," Langford said.
He said inspectors determined that the fire started because the stove's burners were being used to heat the apartment, and those burners set fire to something in the kitchen. He said the fire got hot enough that the coupling on the gas line failed, turning it into a "blowtorch."
Langford said the other two children were trapped in the bedroom off the kitchen.
"To get out of the bedroom, you have to make a hook through the kitchen, so you literally had to go through the flames," Langford said.
He said city's Department of Buildings is still determining whether the basement apartment was legal to live in, but an inspector's report indicated there were no smoke detectors in the basement and the gas line to the stove was not up to code. He said there was no furnace for the apartment and it was heated with space heaters.
Neighbor Sally Johnson said she picked up balloons on Sunday to put in front of the house.
"No one had started, so when I came out of church, I stopped by the balloon store," Johnson said.
She said she didn't know the family who lived in building, but said it was a "sad situation."
"I can't imagine myself in that spot," Johnson said.
The fire started at 10:30 p.m. in the basement of the building.
Two children were killed and another critically injured in a fire late Saturday night.
