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25 Injured in LaSalle Bank Building Blaze

CHICAGO-At least one floor in the 1.4-million-sf, 45-story concrete and steel building is gutted. The city council's building committee has an ordinance requiring commercial high-rise buildings be retrofitted for sprinklers over the next 12 years on its Friday agenda.

By Mark Ruda | Updated on December 07, 2004

CHICAGO-Fire ripped through the 29th floor of the LaSalle Bank building at 135 S. LaSalle St. Monday evening, little more than a year after a similar blaze claimed the lives of six people trapped in stairwells at the Cook County Administration building at 69 W. Washington Blvd. Area hospitals treated 25 persons, 12 of them firefighters, for injuries and smoke inhalation from the five-alarm blaze.

A fire department spokesman reported 13 of the injuries were serious, eight of them firefighters. Ten people were in fair condition and two more in good condition Monday night. More than 300 firefighters and one-third of the departments equipment were on the scene late into the night battling the blaze and were getting ready to determine its cause early Tuesday morning.

Observers note there were major differences between Monday night and the Cook County Administration building tragedy. Doors in stairwells did not lock behind tenants, as they did at the County Administration building, and firefighters quickly took control of the building at a first-floor command center. Workers were told to stay in their offices until firefighters arrived, including those on the on the upper 15 floors above the blaze, then were led out of the smoke-filled building.

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