CFD lieutenant dies battling high-rise blaze on Lake Shore Drive, 2nd firefighter to die in line of duty this week

Lt. Jan Tchoryk was taken to the hospital in “very critical” condition and later died. On Tuesday, firefighter Jermaine Pelt died battling a house fire on the South Side.
By Sophie Sherry, Mitch Dudek, Catherine Odom and Stefano Esposito
Updated Apr 5, 2023, 7:36pm CDTTwitter



Firefighters at the scene of a high-rise fire in the 1200 block or North Lake Shore Drive on Wednesday morning.

A Chicago Fire Department lieutenant died battling an extra-alarm blaze in a high-rise building on Wednesday morning near the Gold Coast neighborhood — the second firefighter to die in the line of duty this week.


“Right now, I have two funerals to prepare for, two grieving families and a huge department that is broken, including the command staff,” CFD Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt told reporters a little later at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, standing beside Nance-Holt, called the back-to-back tragedies “unprecedented.”


Lt. Jan Tchoryk collapsed in an 11th-floor stairwell while making his way to a fire on the 27th floor of an apartment building in the 1200 block of North Lake Shore Drive, according to Chicago fire officials. A mayday went out about 8 a.m. and crews immediately began administering CPR, Nance-Holt said.

Tchoryk was taken to the hospital in “very critical” condition and later succumbed to his injuries. He was a member of the department for 26 years.





Lt. Jan Tchoryk

Tchoryk was an outdoorsman and a Navy veteran who served in Desert Storm, Nance-Holt said. Tchoryk had a big family that included a son who recently joined the Chicago Police Department.