By Annie Sweeney
Chicago Sun Times
Copyright 2006 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
When Chicago firefighter John O’Brien got to him, 8-year-old Max Crawford was in a heap on the floor at the end of his bed, his little nose black with soot. He was barely breathing.
“I [saw] him laying facedown on the carpet,” said O’Brien, who crawled through thick smoke in an early Friday morning fire on the West Side to find Max, who was wearing his PJs.
“I was able to grab him and throw him into my arms. I threw him up against my chest, and I got him down the stairs and right out the front door. . . . He was right around the size of my son.”
Once downstairs, O’Brien, 39, who was working on Tower Ladder 14, gave the boy “rescue breaths” before he was taken by ambulance to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood in critical condition.
Hours later, as Max was recovering, O’Brien and his family, including 7-year-old son Jack, gathered at the firehouse in their Edgebrook neighborhood to talk about the rescue.
It was the second time in his nine years on the job that O’Brien helped rescue a fire victim. He kindly shrugged off suggestions he was a hero. To him, it’s just an exciting job, one he has simply always wanted to do, and he’s proud he and his peers do it well.
HEATER MAY BE TO BLAME
But his family was beaming for him.
“He’s a wonderful father and a wonderful firefighter,” said his wife, Leanne O’Brien, as Jack and his sister and brother, 3-year-old twins Kelly and Danny, played on the trucks. “We’re just so proud of him. Now everybody knows.”
A 68-year-old woman, described by neighbors as Max’s grandmother, suffered minor injuries in the fire. It started in the 1oe-story frame house about 12:15 a.m. in the 1100 block of North Central in the Austin neighborhood.
Neighbors said they awoke to the blare of fire trucks and saw sparks from overhead wires showering the area in front of the house.
Then they heard Max’s mother screaming about a child she could not reach in the smoke, said Nikita Carter, 16.
An electric space heater apparently ignited a bed in the room where Max was sleeping, fire officials said. There were no working smoke detectors in the room -- or on the entire floor -- where Max was found, fire officials said.
Ruben Burgos, who manages the property and used to live there, said he gave the family an electric space heater a week ago after Max’s mother complained it was cold.
Burgos, who was about to leave town, said he planned to take a better look at the heating when he returned. He also said there were four working smoke detectors in the home and insisted there was one upstairs.
Burgos, who knows the family, said Max lived there with three siblings and his mother, Brenda Crawford, who works for the CTA. She could not be reached for comment.
Burgos said he wants to raise money for the family. He said Crawford had talked to him about buying the house one day.
‘HE’S A TOUGH KID’
“My mind is elsewhere,” a shaken Burgos said. “There’s a life at stake here. It’s a child.”
Friends said Max, a curly-haired and slight third-grader at nearby Brunson Math & Science Academy, loves playing video games. But Thursday afternoon, he was outside playing tag, hiding behind trees and running around with his friends.
“I was crying at school,” said 11-year-old Kazier Wilson, who played with Max on Thursday. “But I was thinking he’s gonna make it through. ‘Cuz he’s a tough kid.”
Katherine McIntyre, Max’s teacher at Brunson, called him bright, imaginative and excited about learning. He also likes to draw and has a keen interest in magic tricks.
“He was a well-behaved child. . . . A good student to have in class,” said McIntyre. “He was always asking to share magic with the class. I told him, ‘Maybe later, maybe later.’ ”
McIntyre said Max’s classmates had a big talk in school Friday about the fire.
“They are thinking about him,” she said. “They made a big card and wanted to go see him and make sure he was OK.”