10 Families Displaced After Mokena Condo Fire
A Saturday night fire at the Wolf Point Condominiums in Mokena has left 10 families without a place to stay, according to the Mokena Fire Protection District.
A Saturday night fire at Wolf Point Condominiums has left 10 families uninjured but without a place to stay, the Mokena Fire Protection District reports.
When firefighters arrived at the 12-unit condominim building at 10:19 p.m. Saturday, several residents were still inside, Assistant Chief Joe Cirelli said in a release. They were evacuated without any injuries.
The fire started in the boiler room but had spread into a crawl space, making it difficult to access. It took about half an hour to put out the blaze.
Units from Frankfort, New Lenox, Tinley Park, Homer Township, Northwest Homer and Peotone assisted.
As the fire started in the boiler room, the building is without heat and therefore was deemed uninhabitable. The American Red Cross helped secure temporary housing for the families.
This story will be updated as it develops.
Paul Vroom
6:16 pm on Monday, January 23, 2012
Is there anything the Mokena community can do? Local churches?
Paul Dailing
9:56 pm on Monday, January 23, 2012
I asked Assistant Chief Cirelli about this earlier today. His response (and I couldn't update this until now because I was at a village board meeting) was that as far as he knows there are not currently any place to collect donations or the like. The building is only uninhabitable because there's no heat right now, he said. There might be some smoke damage to some personal property and there was a little damage to a couple of the condos by firefighters checking to see how far the fire extended, but Cirelli thinks everyone should be back in their homes and back to their lives once the heat's back on. So that's good news!
I'll check with the condo association tomorrow to see if there are any collections ongoing. I'll update the story once I know more.
Nicole Fahle
8:14 pm on Friday, May 11, 2012
Just an update to this situation...those families are still displaced...after nearly 4 months. Sounded like fixing the heat was going to be a simple task. This is taking forever.