Woman dies after clothes catch fire in Morton Grove home

SHARE Woman dies after clothes catch fire in Morton Grove home
ambulance_generic_e1525014822630.jpg

Sun-Times file photo

An 87-year-old woman died of injuries she suffered when her clothing caught fire as she cooked Friday morning in her north suburban Morton Grove home, authorities said.

Firefighters responded about 11:20 a.m. to Alice Gutenkauf’s home in the 8400 block of Mason Avenue, according to the Morton Grove Fire Department and Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Gutenkauf’s clothing caught fire as she heated water in her kitchen and she suffered first and third-degree-burns to 70 percent of her body, the fire department said.

She was taken to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, but was later transferred to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where she died at 8:38 p.m., authorities said.

Her death was ruled accidental after an autopsy on Saturday, the medical examiner’s office said.

The Latest
The man was shot in the left eye area in the 5700 block of South Christiana Avenue on the city’s Southwest Side.
Most women who seek abortions are women of color, especially Black women. Restricting access to mifepristone, as a case now before the Supreme Court seeks to do, would worsen racial health disparities.
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”