Chicago apartment fire kills young girl found in bedroom

CHICAGO (AP) - A young girl died Wednesday morning after Chicago firefighters responding to a fire at an apartment building on the city's South Side found her in a bedroom, a fire official said.

Firefighters who responded to calls about a heavy fire and someone possibly trapped in an apartment found the girl under debris in the second-floor unit of the apartment building in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood, said Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department.

He said firefighters tried to resuscitate the child, who was 2 or 3 years old, but she was pronounced dead at a hospital.

'œWhen firefighters got to the scene, they knew the chances of survival were slim because fire was blowing out the windows,'ť Langford told the Chicago Sun-Times.

He said the apartment was full of a lot of furniture and other objects that made searching it difficult.

Two adults escaped from the burning apartment, and someone may have jumped to safety from a window before the fire was extinguished before it spread into adjacent units.

Langford said investigators are looking into what caused the fire at the apartment, which had no working smoke detectors.