By Kara Spak
The Chicago Sun-Times;
Contributing: Mitch Dudek
 AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast Firefighters work in freezing temperatures on an extra-alarm fire at the Holy Name Cathedral, in Chicago, Wednesday. |
CHICAGO — Carrying 50 pounds of equipment, dragging hundreds of feet of heavy hose, firefighters crawled Wednesday morning along a foot-wide catwalk that hovered precariously between Holy Name Cathedral’s roof and ceiling.
There was no light except for the fire’s glow, so the firefighters used their training, senses — and a healthy sense of fear — to navigate around the building’s beams and trusses.
Their quick, careful action in the minutes when most of the city was just beginning to stir saved Holy Name Cathedral on Wednesday.
“The boys saved the church,” said Deputy Chief Tony Romano of the Chicago Fire Department’s 1st District. “It was a heroic effort by all parties to save the church. Everyone chipped in to do their job.”
While everyone chipped in, those who found themselves in the dangerous, elevated area known as a cockloft weren’t looking for extra attention.
“They were crawling, running into wires. There were metal pieces everywhere, and the roughly made scaffolding was hard to maneuver,” said a firefighter who was in the cockloft but asked not to be named. “It’s like someone deliberately set up an obstacle course and said if you fail, you die.”
Department spokesman Larry Langford said firefighters climbed two ladders and squeezed through two openings on the church’s west end to get to the planks leading to the fire in the northeast section of the church roof.
They removed their air tanks to fit through the holes. The catwalk was an estimated 60 feet up, and the firefighters had to sit on the hose to control it, Langford said. “Once they charge the water line, it’s like trying to wrestle a bear,” he said.
The firefighters weren’t tethered to anything because “there was no time,” Langford said. Had anyone slipped, the church’s ceiling was 8 to 12 feet below and the pews and marble floor another 50 feet below that.
“This is probably one of the better saves the Chicago Fire Department has done,” he said. “Church fires that start in the roof attic usually come down and take the sanctuary with them.”
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