Kendall County House Fire Turns Deadly, Elderly Woman Dies
I’ve covered enough house fire cases to know this: the calls that come in mid-morning are often the ones people never see coming. And that’s exactly what struck me when I started looking into the fire on Hanson Road in unincorporated Minooka. You and I both expect mornings to feel ordinary — coffee, routine, sunlight creeping in. But for 75-year-old Sharleen R. Smith, that ordinary morning turned into something no one could escape from.
Just after 9:46 a.m., deputies from the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office were sent to a home along Hanson Road after a report that a woman was still inside a burning house. When I read that detail, it hit hard — the idea of someone trying to make it out, maybe just a few steps from safety, but overwhelmed by the speed of the flames.
By the time first responders got there, the house was already fully engulfed. And if you’ve ever seen a rural home fire, you know how fast it happens. The heat, the smoke, the collapse risk — all of it makes going inside almost impossible, even for trained firefighters. The crews from the Lisbon Seward Fire Protection District had no real chance of reaching her until the flames were beaten back…