A woman was found dead after a Waukegan house just after midnight Friday, the second blaze this month where firefighters were hampered by hoarding conditions inside the home.
The identity of the victim has not yet been released by authorities.
Neighbors alerted Waukegan firefighters to the fire in the 2300 block of Corona Road.
Firefighters arrived to find heavy flames coming from the front of the house, and they said entry was made difficult because of the amount of material inside. Waukegan sought mutual aid from other departments to help fight the blaze and man city fire stations.
During search operations, firefighters found the body of the woman.
Crews were able to control the fire in about 30 minutes. No firefighters were hurt. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
On March 2, an elderly Mundelein woman was found dead in her duplex in the 1200 block of Huntington Drive after a fire.
In that fire, crews had to remove the front door from its hinges to gain entry because the number of items in the house made it impossible to fully open the door.
Inside, crews found things in five-foot-tall piles. The conditions made it impossible for firefighters to reach the second floor of the house, where the body of Alicia Bowles, 77, was found after crews put out the fire.
Waukegan Fire Marshal Todd Zupec said Friday that hoarder-type houses, “provide huge challenges to the fire and EMS services.”
“Even in a medical-call scenario, it is very difficult to maneuver through these types of houses,” he said. “It is incredibly labor-intensive to operate in these situations, and delays care and/or our ability to fight a fire.”
Fires at such houses are not common, but emergency crews keep track of such situations in order to be prepared, Zupec said. First responders also report hoarder houses to the city code enforcement department to help mitigate those conditions.
