CHICAGO—A Saturday night fire that killed a 70-year-old man at a 21-story residential high-rise located at 300 S. Damen Ave. in Chicago shows that the city's new requirement that high-rises pass a special safety evaluation is still not sufficient if buildings do not have fire sprinklers, according to the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board, a nonprofit group that advocates for fire safety equipment. The fire occurred while the man, who was using an oxygen tank, was in bed in his unit on the 11th floor of West Point Plaza. Other residents on the floor were displaced.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, the city's fire safety ordinance now requires all residential high-rise buildings built prior to 1975 that do not have fire sprinklers to pass a City of Chicago Life Safety Evaluation, and allows buildings to pass with other safety measures. According to the city's Data Portal website, the high-rise building passed the evaluation. Officials with the advisory board say the owners of 300 S. Damen did so without installing fire sprinklers.

"This tragic fire is another example of how the city's LSE leaves residents just as vulnerable in residential high-rises where no fire sprinklers are present," says Tom Lia, executive director of the Orland Park, IL-based advisory board. "Although the LSE measures aim to avoid the spread of fire from unit to unit, it does nothing to protect the individuals in the unit of a fire's origin, essentially writing off those residents' lives."

Lia adds that the city's LSE is a “watered down” version of the state code, adopted by the Illinois State Fire Marshal in January 2002. Following the deadly Cook County Administration Building fire in 2003, a report commissioned by the state recommended that all high-rises in Chicago be protected with fire sprinklers. "The Illinois State Fire Marshal should investigate the building for violations of the state code," Lia says.

Nearly 100 other residential high-rises have already installed fire sprinklers, the board's data show.

“We're trying to get residents to look at the buildings that they're moving into,” another official representing the advisory board tells GlobeSt.com, and encourage them to press owners to install sprinklers. “We've heard of buildings that have spent millions of dollars” on alternative fire safety measures to pass the LSE, money better spent on sprinklers. “Chicago's code is just not up to what it should be.”