50-year-old man dies after Elk Grove Village fire produces huge smoke cloud near O'Hare
ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. (WLS) -- One person has died after a fire in Elk Grove Village created a huge cloud of thick smoke near O'Hare airport.
Oskar Dziadon, 50, of Spring Grove died Wednesday night at Loyola Hospital, after suffering serious burns in Tuesday's fire, ABC news partner the Daily Herald reported.
Acting Elk Grove Village Fire Chief Nathan Gac said the person injured in the fire was a worker.
No one else was injured.
The fire broke out about 6 a.m. Tuesday in the 2400-block of Pan Am Boulevard.
Fire officials said they had to notify the control tower at O'Hare of what was going on.
Chopper 7 flew above the scene of the semi-tractor repair facility where a building, four trailers, two tractors and seven cars were burning.
"So there was a significant amount of black smoke, a heavy volume of black smoke, mostly on the exterior of the building, ranging between 50 to 60 feet in the air," Gac said.
The fire broke out at the business, which is located inside an industrial park, where workers nearby heard loud booms.
"So we were working, right? And then, we heard like four loud like explosions," said Martin Juarez, who works nearby. "At first we thought it was a plane crash because we're close to O'Hare, but it was just across the street, and we saw the flames coming up."
The Environmental Protection Agency and water reclamation were on-site to monitor water run-off for any kind of contaminants, like diesel fuel or used motor oil, as investigators work to determine what caused this fire.
Fire officials said the fire did not have any impact on O'Hare, but it did cause a power outage in the area when the flames spread to overhead power lines.
