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Six apartments uninhabitable after blaze in Schaumburg

Unfazed by the thick smoke, Sangamithra Gopikrishnan raced from door to door, banging with her fists, trying to alert her neighbors to a fire inside their Schaumburg apartment building Friday morning.

It was before 8 a.m., and Gopikrishnan feared her neighbors were still sleeping.

The fire in the Savannah Trace complex on the 1400 block of Albany Court left six units uninhabitable, displacing all their occupants. No one was hurt, fire officials said, even though firefighters had to rescue two people from the second floor where they were trapped by smoke.

Gopikrishnan was up and waiting to drive her husband to work. The couple looked out their window and saw, two balconies away, flames consuming a second-floor apartment.

Gopikrishnan leapt up and ran into the hallway. She had knocked on a few doors but no one answered.

“I stood there knocking, knocking, but I couldn't hear any response,” the 25-year-old said.

Then her husband dragged her away and down the stairs. Outside, people still in their pajamas were huddled while firefighters attacked the blaze in the building's rear, facing Mercury Drive.

Directly above the ground floor apartment where the fire started, a man and woman waited for rescue from their second-floor unit. The pair apparently tried to get out through their front door, but heavy smoke in the building stairwell forced them back up, Schaumburg Deputy Fire Chief William Spencer said.

They opened a window and were waving their arms at firefighters who arrived about 7:45 a.m. and safely led them down a ladder.

The fire uprooted residents in six units, displacing them for at least a week and causing about $300,000 in damage, authorities said. The Red Cross is helping them find temporary shelter. The Gopikrishnans' home was slightly damaged by smoke, and the husband and wife were considering whether to stay in a hotel.

Still, no one was hospitalized or even reported injured, Spencer said.

In the ground-floor unit, where the fire started, a man came out of his bedroom and found “thick, dark” smoke in the main living area, and some flames near another bedroom, Spencer said.

The man, who was alone in the apartment, waded through about two feet of smoke covering the floor and got outside through sliding glass doors in the kitchen. The apartment was “completely gutted,” Schaumburg Fire Cpt. Mark Nelson said.

The fire extended into the unit above and into the building's attic before firefighters brought it under control in about 20 minutes.

The cause of the fire is under investigation. There were smoke detectors in the ground-floor unit, but it was unclear whether the devices were working.

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