By SARAH SUTSCHEK and CYNDI WYSS – Northwest Herald

HARVARD – Jane Gasiorowski awoke Tuesday to her alarm at 4 a.m. and smelled smoke. When she opened her apartment door, she saw her neighbor across the hall, apologizing profusely.

“The guy from 1C was standing in a smoke-filled hall between his apartment and mine in his underwear saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over again.”

Gasiorowski said she assumed that the man was apologizing because he had started his apartment – and ultimately the building at 1415 Northfield Court – on fire. She said she saw flames shooting out his patio, and he was shrouded in smoke.

The man, 58-year-old John R. McKoski, later died.

The state fire marshal determined that McKoski caused the fire after falling asleep while smoking, spokeswoman Januari Smith said.

“He didn’t die in the fire,” Gasiorowski said. “He walked out the back door of the building, between our apartments. He lay down in the grass. As far as I knew, … I didn’t see he was suffering in any way, and I was more worried about trying to get other people out.”

An autopsy showed that McKoski did not die from smoke inhalation, Coroner Marlene Lantz said.

“We did not find any soot in his airway, which means it could be a natural death or it could still be as a result of the fire,” Lantz said.

Toxicology results, which will not be available for several weeks, will reveal whether McKoski suffered from carbon-monoxide poisoning or whether he had drugs or alcohol in his system, she said.

The Harvard Fire Department responded to the fire about 3:35 a.m. and arrived on the scene about 3:42 a.m. In addition to McKoski, rescue personnel took a woman to Mercy Harvard Hospital.

Virginia Schaefer, 54, was treated for smoke inhalation and released.

“I’m fortunate because I have a place to go, my sister’s, but some people don’t,” Schaefer said. “I’m kind of nervous person anyway, but I’ve been shaking so bad.”

Gasiorowski said the smoke detector in her unit was not going off. Concerned about other tenants, she pounded on a fire door to awaken anyone who might still have been sleeping.

But from inside his apartment where he was watching TV on a living-room couch, Matt Bell could hear smoke detectors in the hallway.

“I wasn’t sure what it was, so I came out to the balcony, and I saw the smoke,” Bell said. “I woke up my wife, who popped out of bed and banged on everybody’s door.”

Twelve units in two separate buildings were made uninhabitable by the fire, displacing 16 people, said Chief Dan Kazy-Garey of the Harvard Police Department.

Representatives for the apartment complex’s owner, Cunat Inc., were working with the McHenry County Housing Authority to find places to stay for the displaced families.

“We have the funds available to provide them with shelter. So if they need it, we can provide it,” said the housing authority’s executive director, Julie Biel Claussen. “We are trying to get them through this difficult situation. We know it’s devastating.”

Twenty fire departments with about 85 firefighters and EMS personnel responded, as well as the McHenry County Sheriff’s Department, the McHenry County Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross, The Salvation Army, and Animal Control.

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