She’s only 8 years old, but when a fire broke out in her third-floor apartment, a Chicago girl hatched a heroic plan — throwing a mattress out the window so she and her little brothers could jump down to safety, fire officials said Thursday.
The girl was coaxing her 4-year-old brother to jump down after her when fire officials arrived to rescue the two tots — and their 2-year-old brother, who was still upstairs, officials said.
All three kids had been left home alone in the South Wabash Avenue apartment when the fire erupted just before midnight Wednesday, officials tweeted of the dramatic incident.
They were later treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation, the Chicago Tribune reported.
“I’m thinking, damn, these kids are smart,” a department spokesman, District Chief Frank Velez, told the Tribune.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, but the fact of the matter is that the kid was quite innovative to think of something,” he said.
“You’d be surprised on what an individual can do when you’re in that sympathetic and parasympathetic stage of fight or flight,” he added.
The girl and her two younger brothers were at home alone when the fire started. Chicago Fire Dept.“They’re thinking to save themselves one way or another and obviously you have to give a credit to the kid for really thinking of something like that.”
The kids’ mother had been at work and a neighbor was supposed to be babysitting the three children, Velez said. It was unclear how the fire started and where the neighbor was at the time the fire broke out.
The mother had not been charged, a Chicago police spokeswoman told the Tribune.
