Since 2014, Chicago fires have killed at least 61 people in buildings where city officials knew ahead of time about fire safety problems, according to an investigation by the Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune.

Some homes lacked smoke detectors or heat in wintertime. Some were overcrowded or didn’t have enough exits. People died in abandoned buildings the city failed to secure or demolish.

Here are details on each of these 42 fires, including news photos and excerpts from public documents, from inspection records to fire reports. To read more about how we identified these fires, read How We Reported This Story. 

Madison Hopkins rejoined the newsroom in April 2023. Before returning, she was the health accountability reporter for The Kansas City Beacon, where she collaborated with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network to investigate Missouri's oversight of sheltered workshops for adults with disabilities.

Originally from Southern California, Madison moved to Chicago to earn her master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She initially joined the Better Government Association in 2016, where she investigated Chicago's recycling program failures, the absence of regulatory enforcement at Illinois nuclear power plants and bureaucratic failures in Chicago's building code enforcement system that contributed to dozens of fatal fires.