Surviving the Fire: Chicago Ridge Apartment Blaze Took Everything

Three months after the blaze, after swallowing her fear and the heartbreak of lost mementos, Candace Smith is rebuilding the parts of her life that disintegrated in a two-alarm Chicago Ridge fire.

Smith and her three children were among the 15 people displaced Jan. 5 after their apartment complex in the 9800 block of Sayre Avenue burned.

Smith had just put her daughters Jada, 11, and Chloe, 1, to bed that night when she heard a scream. As smoke began rising through the floor of her unit, she grabbed only her children, her purse and her keys.

After firefighters extinguished the blaze, first-floor residents were allowed back inside. But Smith said she snuck into her third-floor apartment.

“Everything was destroyed,” she said. “The refrigerator was melted to the floor.”

Smith screamed at the sight, and her 16-year-old son, Richard, heard her from across the street and came running. Smith said she didn’t want him to see their home this way, so she met him outside and fell into his arms. He hugged her tightly and told her everything would be OK.

“I couldn’t believe what was happening,” Smith said. “I was lost for the first week, and my family surrounded me. I just looked at my babies, and I realized I had to be a big girl and fight for them.”

The fire took all her possessions that Monday. Smith took the day off Tuesday, but on Wednesday, she got right back to work.

“God stripped me of everything and made it so I didn’t have anything, and I didn’t have a choice but to accept help.”

~ Candace Smith

Through January and February, Smith and her children squeezed into her parents’ two-bedroom apartment, where her brother also lives. Smith’s father slept on a chaise so Smith, Jada, Chloe and Smith’s mother could sleep in the bed.

Smith would drive Richard to Oak Lawn Community High School and Jada to Simmons Middle School before dropping Chloe at daycare and heading to work in Tinley Park.

Things have been a little simpler and a bit roomier lately, since Smith and her children moved March 5 into an apartment in Oak Lawn, closer to the schools.

“I’m just trying to work and rebuild,” Smith said. “I don’t want to say it was hard. It was more of a struggle just to watch the kids cope with not having anything anymore.”

Smith said people and organizations have donated food, clothes and dishes. The Red Cross gave them money. People contributed to her gofundme page. Her children’s schools took up collections. They gathered coats and book bags, and some of Jada’s teachers gave her two Forever 21 gift cards to replace the one she got for Christmas.

Even on the night of the fire, the driver of the warming bus, where the apartment complex’s residents took shelter, called one of his family members to buy baby bottles, diapers and socks for Smith’s children, who ran empty handed into the winter night.

“It’s a cold world out here, but we received a lot of warm hearts,” Smith said.

Times are tough, but Smith said they’re making it. Her landlord from Chicago Ridge returned part of her security deposit, though Comcast still says she owes about $1,000 for unreturned cable boxes. Smith used her income tax refund to finance a couch, and she prays she can keep shoes on her teenage son’s constantly growing feet.

Smith mostly laments the irreplaceable items the fire took from her, like Jada’s drawings, Richard’s eighth-grade graduation medals and precious family photographs.

But the fire has showed Smith how strong she and her family can be, and she said she’s learned it’s all right to let others help.

“God stripped me of everything and made it so I didn’t have anything, and I didn’t have a choice but to accept help,” Smith said. “We’re still here. We’re still surviving, and we just want people to keep us in their prayers.”

Photo provided by Candace Smith

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