Firefighters worked for hours Monday to extinguish a burning wooden piling at a construction site under a Lake Shore Drive bridge downtown.
A construction worker’s blowtorch had set fire to a piling about 10:45 a.m. near the base of the bridge in the Chicago River, according to Chicago Fire Dept. spokesman Larry Merritt. A fire department boat responded and doused the flames within a half hour, but the fire reignited and proved difficult to extinguish, Merritt said. Fire crews monitored and continued to extinguish the flames well into the afternoon.
Merritt said the issue was that the wooden piling was encased in metal, which prevented fire fighters from accessing the source of the fire.
The fire was extinguished by 3 p.m. and the scene was turned over to the contractor, Merritt said.