CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Part of a burning two-story home collapsed late Sunday night in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood where firefighters found a frozen fire hydrant and had to use another hydrant nearby.
Firefighters arrived at about 11:40 p.m. to a fully engulfed two-story home in the 8400 block of South Gilbert Court, not far from Vincennes and Halsted, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
Crews initially tried to access a hydrant near Vincennes, but it was frozen and had no water pressure, department spokesman Curtis Hudson said. Firefighters were able to use another hydrant nearby.
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Cold weather brings challenges for firefighters, and Fire Department Spokesman Larry Langford said how much of a challenge depends on how extreme the cold is.
“Two engines are sent to every still alarm - a minimum of two. So you have crews going for two different hydrants in two different directions from the fire," he said.
“Each engine has 500 gallons of water on it, so that water can be used to quickly knock down a fire while they’re getting an active hydrant hooked up.”
Langford said if a firefighter determines the hydrant is frozen, the other engine at the scene will be working the second hydrant, which Langford said more than likely will be good.
He said in extremely cold weather, the fire alarm office may send three engines out. That means firefighters bring 1,500 gallons with them - as they look for an unfrozen hydrant.
If it’s really bad, Langford said, the Water Department dispatches steam trucks out with firefighters to un-freeze a hydrant.
In this case, the fire raged on for over an hour as crews tried to keep it from spreading to neighboring buildings, Hudson said. Part of the building collapsed, he said. Two adjacent homes were slightly damaged by fire exposure.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were displaced by the fire. No one was injured.
The fire’s cause was under investigation.
(WBBM Newsradio and the Chicago Sun-Time contributed to this copy.)