Wicker Park Letter Carrier Notices Smoke, Gets Resident Out of Burning House

CHICAGO, IL — The next-door neighbors couldn't see it from their porch.  Fortunately, the letter carrier did.

Gordon Freeman, a 13-year letter carrier at the Wicker Park station, noticed smoke coming from inside the wall of a house at 2434 W. Iowa Street as he was about to deliver mail there.  He asked the next-door neighbors if they knew that the house was burning, but they didn't see it.  Then, Freeman knocked on the door to tell the resident.  She couldn't see the smoke from inside the house.

Freeman insisted that the danger was real, and when the resident stuck her finger in a crack where the heat of the smoke could be felt, she finally realized it.  She came back outside with a bucket of water, but Freeman cautioned her against using it in case it was an electrical fire. Instead, he made sure everyone was out of the house and called the fire department.  The fire was extinguished before any major damage was done to the house, and no one was injured.

The next day, the customer thanked Freeman for his quick thinking and concern.  For his part, Freeman chalked it up to acting on “natural instinct.”

“[Getting everyone out of the house] felt like the right thing to do at the time,” he said in retrospect.  “Otherwise, I would have come out the next day and a house would not have been there.  I would hope that someone would have done the same for me.”