5-year-old boy reportedly saves 13 people from a Chicago fire

A 5-year-old boy is being hailed as a hero for saving the lives of 13 people in a Chicago house fire early Saturday morning.

According to CBS Chicago, Jayden Espinoza, 5, woke up around 4 a.m. on Saturday at his multi-family home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood to find smoke and flames engulfing the building. He quickly got up and alerted the entire family that the structure was on fire.

“If he didn’t wake us up, in those two minutes, we would have been out of there,” Nicole Peeples, a fellow resident, told CBS Chicago. Peeples also told the Associated Press that “the fire alarms never went off. I’m so glad he was there.”

Now, all that remains at the scene of the fire is broken glass and charred materials. Seven adults and six children were left homeless as a result, but luckily there were no injuries, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

“We lost everything inside, we lost baby cloths, pictures, ID’s, social security cards, birth certificates, we lost everything, “fellow resident James Bennett told CBS Chicago.

The cause of the fire, which started in the rear of the two-story building, is currently under investigation.

Yahoo Lifestyle reached out to the Chicago Fire Department but was not able to reach anyone at the time of publication. Peeples and Bennett could not be reached by Yahoo Lifestyle.

Earlier this year, fires in the same Back of the Yards neighborhood were exacerbated by frozen fire hydrants, which made it difficult for firefighters to gain access to water, the Chicago Tribune reported.

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