Officials: Construction may have caused Arlington Hts. fire

Construction work may be to blame for a house fire Tuesday night in Arlington Heights, officials said.

The Arlington Heights Fire Department responded to a call for a kitchen fire around 5:15 p.m. Tuesday at a home on the 400 block of South Dunton Avenue, shift Cmdr. Bill Essling said.

Crews found fire in wall of the home’s kitchen and had to tear open the walls to extinguish it, he said. Firefighters were on scene for about two hours; no one was injured.

Essling said the cause of the fire is still under investigation, but there were some construction workers still on site at the home who had been doing some plumbing work earlier in the day, which may have caused the fire.

The house is still able to be lived in, but the family chose to stay elsewhere Tuesday night.

Arlington Heights responded with extra trucks because of the extreme cold temperatures, Essling said. Eight trucks responded with more than 30 firefighters, including a truck from Rolling Meadows.

“We brought in extra companies just to try to rotate the guys because of the cold,” he said. “We had a warming van out there too to warm them up.”

The fire was just down the block from where a house fire killed three women in November.