"It has become one of these critical stories of Chicago," said John Russick, vice president for interpretation and education at the Chicago History Museum. "If you call yourself a Chicagoan, you know what's on a Chicago-style hot dog, you know who Shoeless Joe Jackson was and you know when the Chicago flood happened."
The flood marked a turning point for the city and downtown building owners. The unexpected crisis prompted officials to put emergency plans and other safety measures in place that have kept the tunnels in use and avoided other disasters.
Although the flood on April 13, 1992, was mainly out of sight, lurking 40 feet below the city's streets, it wreaked visible havoc.
In a mass exodus from downtown, thousands of workers packed onto standing-room-only buses for free rides while trains were rerouted to elevated tracks. Traffic lights stopped working. Streets lined with restaurants and shops — including Marshall Field's flagship State Street location — were deserted.
The Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange closed. Banks were unable to process transactions. Workers rushed to save important documents — including Cook County birth, death and marriage certificates dating back to 1871 — stored in subterranean levels of office buildings.
The flood became national news and led Gov. Jim Edgar and President George H.W. Bush to declare Chicago a disaster area.
It caused at least $1 billion in damages and business losses, sparked numerous lawsuits and turned into a political hot potato for then-Mayor Richard M. Daley over who was to blame for a leak in the then-47-mile tunnel system near the Kinzie Street Bridge.
In January 1992, a few months after wooden pilings were installed by a dredging company to protect the bridge from boat traffic, a cable television company surveying the tunnel there saw that a wall had cracked and notified the city. It would be months before city officials would get bids for repair work. The city's failure to act quickly resulted in the discipline or resignation of eight city employees.
Today, the dark tunnels in the bowels of the city are closed to the public but remain in use.
The freight tunnels — which are separate from the city's Deep Tunnel system designed to collect stormwater — are used to carry telecom and utility wires to thousands of Loop businesses. In the early to mid-1900s, phone companies ran wires and coal was transported on small rail cars through the underground labyrinth.
A Tribune tour of the tunnels this week provided a rare look into the world below the city. A low level of water — about an inch in some places — had collected, rainwater that seeped in from manhole covers on the street. CTA trains rumbled above.
Without the tunnel, utility companies would tear up the street to install wires and cables, said J.J. Madia a civil engineer for the city, adding that safety measures put in place by the city have kept a vital resource working well.
"We covered every base we could to make sure we do our due diligence and make sure the structural integrity does not get damaged," he said, "because this is a great asset to the city."
'Fish swimming down there'
The Merchandise Mart was the first to report to authorities that water was seeping into the basement. Building security called Myron Maurer, who at the time was the director of operations at the Mart, around 6 a.m. to inform him that a foot or 2 of water had made its way into the boiler room. About a half-hour later, it was about 10 to 15 feet, Maurer said.
"I knew at that point it was not any kind of piping problem," said Maurer, now chief operating officer of the Merchandise Mart.
Water in the boiler room eventually rose to about 20 to 25 feet, but the building never lost power, he said.
"It was the strangest kind of disaster that I can remember," said Maurer, who recalled a slow, calm parade of people crossing bridges and heading north from downtown. No major injuries were reported.
Susan Rinke watched crews work to stop the leak from her townhouse overlooking the Kinzie Street Bridge. Her street was blocked off from vehicular traffic, she said, but she often saw politicians, emergency personnel and news media staged outside her home.
"You couldn't be in our neighborhood," she recalled.
The leak was sealed a few days after rising water was discovered in basements, but cleanup efforts took weeks. Workers armed with brooms and squeegees swept and pumped flood water into the streets and used air dryers and industrial dehumidifiers to dry out basements. Employees were bumped to suburban offices to work.
The massive Carson Pirie Scott on State Street, now a CityTarget, was the last major Loop retailer to reopen after being closed for two weeks. Subterranean levels of the building were completely submerged, said Bob Kazunas, who worked as the store's manager and director of operations for food service. The entire building was blacked out with no power, water or heat.
"We had fish swimming down there," Kazunas recalled of the underground rooms. "It was the typical river stench. As the water went down, you've got dead fish laying around and all the junk from the river and the filth," he said.
Restaurants like Solomon's Fishery suffered a power loss and had to trash spoiling food and close for two weeks.
The disruption was "devastating" for business, said owner Sylvester "Syl" Thompson, who lost customers and never fully recovered. He closed the location two years later.
"It was rough. It destroyed my headquarters," said Thompson, a blues singer and producer who also owned other restaurant franchises. "The revenue was great in that store. What can I tell you? It just impacted the whole business. It made me want to go back and sing the blues again."
Lessons learned
The flood prompted the city and building owners to create safeguards to avoid a repeat of that historic day.
Officials said they've improved coordination among city agencies, retained a contractor for emergency tunnel repairs, put protocols in place to safeguard against a recurrence and developed contingency plans for projects in close proximity to the tunnel to be better prepared if another disaster strikes.
During the flood, business tenants tried to get rent credits from landlords because they couldn't open for business, said Patrick Caruso, board member of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago. After the flood, tenants began securing business interruption insurance to cover the loss of income due to disasters, he said.
"This was probably the trigger that got almost every building to have policies, put it in writing, what to do in the event of an occurrence," Caruso said.
The city has taken steps to avoid another flood, including installing 30 bulkheads to seal off the tunnel system at points that pass under the river.
Sixteen bulkheads are fitted with watertight, 21/2-inch thick steel hatches like a bank vault door and equipped with door sensors and electronic water level sensors, according to the city's Department of Transportation, which maintains the remaining 38 miles of the tunnel system. The system would immediately alert Madia, the city civil engineer, if a section of tunnel under the river reaches 12 inches of water. The other bulkheads sealed off sections of the tunnel to guard against future floods.
City inspectors regularly evaluate the structural integrity of the tunnels, make note of areas that require preventive maintenance and keep track of what work is being done and where, Madia said. The city reviews all plans for any excavation that would go more than 12 feet below ground level near the tunnels and requires electronic monitoring of vibrations, water pressure and cracking or damage. Any project sites adjacent to the tunnels are inspected twice a day, Madia said.
For most Chicago residents, the tunnels remain invisible but necessary.
"There are a lot of things hidden beneath our feet today only revealed through a collection at the museum," said Russick of the history museum. "An accident reveals a whole other layer in Chicago that had been forgotten."
lvivanco@chicagotribune.com
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