Naperville assisted living facility seeks community support after fire damages 5 units, causes $300K in damage [Naperville Sun, Ill.]

Dec. 5—After suffering an estimated $300,000 in damages in a recent fire, an independent living facility in Naperville is seeking donations to offset some repair and recovery costs.

Last week, a fire at Katharine Manor Apartments, a two-story housing complex on the city's north side for those who are mobility impaired, displaced four residents and left five of 32 total units uninhabitable. The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Though no one was injured, losses have mounted in other ways, facility officials say.

A "Fire Support Fund" will help cover the expense of apartment remodels and facility repairs and assist residents who need to replace belongings lost in the fire. Katharine Manor's nonprofit affiliate, Illinois Independent Living Center, is managing the fund.

"There's some stuff that our insurance is going to end up covering, but this is to offset costs that won't be," said Paul Koretke, president of the Illinois Independent Living Center's board of directors.

Speaking over the phone Monday, Koretke said residents don't have the same protections as the nonprofit does in terms of insurance coverage for damage and losses.

"As far as I know," he said, "of the apartments that were affected, (the residents) don't have renters insurance. So their contents, whatever they lost, is on them."

Built in 1988, Katharine Manor is specifically designed for people who are mobility impaired but still alert and able to live independently, its website says. That means units are all wheelchair accessible and assistive services are available, should residents need them, but that for the most part, residents live on their own.

Recalling Nov. 29, the day of the fire, Koretke said he first heard there was a fire from the building's executive director, who texted him "in panic mode" just after 2 p.m. About the same time, the Naperville Fire Department started getting reports of the blaze.

In a news release last week, the department said initial notice came from a fire alarm monitoring company. As firefighters were en route to the scene, additional calls came from from the facility's building manager — who reported heavy smoke coming from an upstairs unit — and residents on the second floor saying they were trapped.

It took about 20 minutes for crews to get the incident under control, fire officials reported.

One resident had to be rescued from a second-floor window. While some were evacuated to the Costco store on nearby Ogden Avenue, which served as a warming center, others were moved to unaffected areas in the building, Koretke said.

"It was a very harrowing experience," Katharine Manor resident Gail Burton said. "You didn't know what was going on or if everybody was safe. ... The people in the building are our friends, our family."

Burton was one of the residents that evacuated to Costco. She and about six others stayed at the retailer for two hours, waiting for word that they could return, she said. When residents were allowed back into the building, Burton was relieved to find her apartment was untouched.

"I'm a very independent person so to be able to continue to do that ... to maintain our own apartments and have our individual space is really important," she said.

Burton, who has multiple sclerosis and relies on a wheelchair, has lived at Katharine Manor for the last seven years. The possibility of losing that independent space is what scared her the most, she said.

"What kept going through my mind was, 'What if it had been my apartment?' she said.

For a handful of residents, it was. According to Koretke, the fire damage prevented five residents from returning to their apartments.

A few were able to relocate within Katharine Manor or with family members, but the facility is still working to rehouse two others — including the resident whose apartment suffered the most in last week's blaze.

While smoke spread to and ultimately damaged several units, the fire itself stayed isolated to one apartment. Its tenant was out at a medical appointment at the time.

"She was at the hospital getting (cancer) treatment," Koretke said. "So she came back to find that her apartment had burned."

Koretke said, "She pretty much lost everything she had," adding that she has been staying in a hotel, courtesy of the Red Cross, since the fire.

Other losses were more minor. Secondary damages resulted from not only smoke, but also water from sprinklers triggered during the fire and from fie hoses.

Tuesday morning, almost a week after the fire, restoration efforts were well underway, with crews stripping water-damaged walls and floors for replacement. Koretke said he estimates it will take about two to three months to make the affected units habitable again.

In the meantime, investigation into the incident continues, according to Naperville Fire Division Chief Daniel Smith.

Smith said he hopes to have things tied up in 30 days. Though optimistic investigators will find a cause, the difficulty is "any type of evidence that is left — incidental or incendiary — is destroyed as it burns," he said.

"You're essentially putting together a puzzle with broken pieces," he said.

Koretke said he has not received any update on the origin of the fire but it hasn't flagged anything that needs to change about the facility or operations. He did say, however, that going forward, "we'll strongly recommend that everybody gets renters insurance."

Contributions to Illinois Independent Living Center/Katharine Manor Apartments' Fire Support Fund can be made at www.iilckm.org.

[email protected]

___

(c)2023 the Naperville Sun (Naperville, Ill.)

Visit the Naperville Sun (Naperville, Ill.) at www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.