By Fran Spielman
Chicago Sun Times
Copyright 2006 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Crawling through a burning building to reach a disoriented 50-year-old man who would have died if not for his heroics, off-duty Chicago Fire Department Lt. Joseph Kish could think of only one thing: “Here we go again.”
Three months before the Jan. 25 fire in the 2800 block of South Princeton, Kish was seriously injured while fighting a fire at the shuttered Brach’s Candy complex in the 500 block of North Cicero. He was hospitalized for three weeks. His thigh was so severely burned he needed skin grafts.
On Tuesday, Kish received the Carter Harrison Award, this year’s highest honor for fire bravery, for putting his own life on the line to save another just days before he was scheduled to return to work.
“I hadn’t even gone back to my first 24-hour platoon,” said Kish, 44. “What I did say on the third floor [of the burning building] is, ‘Here we go again.’ ”
Kish said he didn’t hesitate to enter the building, even though he had no oxygen, helmet or protective gear.
“I’ve been trained by some of the best guys on this job [who] are chiefs now. . . . They don’t teach you [to walk away]. They teach you to do the job the right way,” he said.
The fire broke out about 1:30 p.m. as Kish was doing volunteer work outside St. Jerome School, where his two sons are students.
When a woman told him there was a fire down the street, he ran to check it out. Flames were shooting out a third-floor window.
FIREFIGHTER UNSCATHED
“It looked vacant because it was a pretty beat-up building. I thought, at most, I’d just open the place up. Get the doors opened up [so when fire companies] got there, they could just go to work. Then I started seeing people with kids coming out,” he said.
“I put in my mind, ‘There’s people in this building. They look like they just woke up.’ So when I got up to the third [floor, I said to myself], ‘Let me give this a really good check.’ I proceeded down the hallway. I got into the bedroom. I heard some noise. I found him half on the bed, half off the bed and dragged him out to the rear porch. Then I went back in to check another bedroom.”
Despite his earlier injury, Kish emerged from the building unscathed. Well, almost unscathed. There was one minor casualty.
“Actually, I had a wool jacket on from Marshall Field’s that I kind of messed up. And I was kind of mad at it. My wife bought it for me,” he said.
The Lambert Tree Award, this year’s highest honor for police bravery, went to Chicago Police Sgt. Richard Plotke Jr., 37.
Plotke was helping two Morton Grove police detectives serve warrants on two men wanted on charges of home invasion and beating a woman when the suspects opened fire.
‘I WAS PREPARED’
During the Jan. 21, 2005, shootout, Plotke grabbed the arm of one of the gunmen and got into a struggle with him before shooting and killing both armed offenders. One of the Morton Grove detectives was shot in the chest, but saved by his bulletproof vest.
“If anyone had to get involved that day, I was kind of glad it was me because I was prepared. I just came from the 11th [Harrison] District, which as you know, has violence. I’ve done many search warrants prior to getting promoted to sergeant. I was just mentally prepared. And when it kicked off bad, the training just took over,” he said.
“When I had five minutes to think about, ‘What did I just do,’ I thought of my family. I thought that I would like to run out the door and never do this again. But you’ve got a job to do so you stick it out.”