Chicago Flood
Encyclopedia
The Chicago Flood occurred on April 13, 1992, when the damaged wall of a utility tunnel beneath the Chicago River
Chicago River
The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of that runs through the city of the same name, including its center . Though not especially long, the river is notable for being the reason why Chicago became an important location, as the link between the Great Lakes and...

 opened into a breach which flooded basements and underground facilities throughout the Chicago Loop
Chicago Loop
The Loop or Chicago Loop is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas located in the City of Chicago, Illinois. It is the historic commercial center of downtown Chicago...

 with an estimated 250 million USgals (946,353 m³) of water.

Cause

Rehabilitation work on the Kinzie Street Bridge crossing the Chicago River required new pilings. Unbeknownst to work crews aboard a barge operated by the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company
Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company
Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company is an American company providing construction services in dredging and land reclamation, currently the largest such provider in the United States. GLD&D operates primarily in the United States but conducts one-quarter of its business overseas...

, beneath the river was an abandoned Chicago Tunnel Company
Chicago Tunnel Company
The Chicago Tunnel Company built a narrow gauge railway freight tunnel network under the downtown of the city of Chicago. This was regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission as an interurban despite the fact that it operated entirely under central Chicago, did not carry passengers, and was...

 tunnel that had been used in the early twentieth century to transport coal and goods. One of the pilings on the east bank was driven into the bottom of the river alongside the north wall of the old tunnel. Although the piling did not actually punch through the tunnel wall, it caused pressure that cracked the wall, and mud began to ooze in. After some weeks, all the soft mud had passed, opening a leak. The situation was as serious as it was because the flood doors had been removed from the old tunnels after they were disused.

Discovery of the leak

A telecommunications worker inspecting a cable running through the tunnel discovered the leak while it was still passing mud and forwarded a videotape to the city, which did not see anything serious and began a bid process to repair the tunnel. The CTC tunnels were never formally a public responsibility, as most of them had been dug clandestinely, many violated private property, and the collapse of the operator had failed to resolve ownership and maintenance responsibilities. Meanwhile the mud continued to push through until the river was able to pour in unabated, creating an unmistakable emergency.

Effects

The water flooded into the basements of several Loop office buildings and retail stores and an underground shopping district. The city quickly evacuated the Loop and financial district in fear that electrical wires could short out. Electrical power and natural gas went down or were shut off as a precaution in much of the area. Trading at both the Chicago Board of Trade Building
Chicago Board of Trade Building
The Chicago Board of Trade Building is a skyscraper located in :Chicago, Illinois, United States. It stands at 141 W. Jackson Boulevard at the foot of the LaSalle Street canyon, in the Loop community area in Cook County. Built in 1930 and first designated a Chicago Landmark on May 4, 1977, the...

 and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Chicago Mercantile Exchange
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is an American financial and commodity derivative exchange based in Chicago. The CME was founded in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board. Originally, the exchange was a non-profit organization...

 ended in mid-morning as water seeped into their basements. At its height, some buildings had 40 feet (12 m) of water in their lower levels. However, at the street level there was no water to be seen, as it was all underground.

At first, the source of the water was unclear. WMAQ reporter Larry Langford, who was that station's overnight crime reporter and was known to cover all overnight police and fire activity for that station, reported that City crews were in the process of shutting down large water mains to see if the flow could be stopped.

Langford was monitoring police scanners and overheard security crews from Chicago's Merchandise Mart
Merchandise Mart
When opened in 1930, the Merchandise Mart or the Merch Mart, located in the Near North Side, Chicago, Illinois, was the largest building in the world with of floor space. Previously owned by the Marshall Field family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating vendors...

 report that they had several feet of water in the basement and were seeing fish in the water. Langford drove to the Merchandise Mart, which is located near the Kinzie Street Bridge, and reported on WMAQ that he saw water swirling near a piling in a manner that that resembled water going down the drain of a bathtub. The swirl had a generous amount of small debris spinning in it. His exact words on WMAQ were:
"I have found something very interesting in the Chicago River on the east side of the Kinzie Bridge. I see swirling water that looks like a giant drain... I would say it looks like the source of the water could be the river itself, and I am hearing reports that fish are swimming in the basement of the Mart just feet from the swirl! I do not see any emergency crews near this spinning swirl, but I think they may want to take a look. In fact, I think someone should wake up the Mayor!"


Within minutes of that report hitting the airwaves, a battery of city trucks, police and fire vehicles converged on the bridge. Langford was the first to figure out the source of the leak. Langford retired from WMAQ in 2000 after that station converted to sports radio station WSCR
WSCR
WSCR is a sports radio station in the Chicago, Illinois radio market. The station is owned by CBS Radio and transmits on 670 kHz on the AM dial. Its transmitter is located just off Army Trail Road in Bloomingdale, which is a western suburb of Chicago. It is known as "The Score," and has been on...

 and became the director of Media Affairs for the Chicago Fire Department.

Repair and cleanup

Workers attempted to plug the hole, by then about 20 feet (6.1 m) wide, with 65 truckloads of rocks, cement and old mattresses. In an attempt to slow the leak, the level of the Chicago River was lowered by closing the locks at Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron...

 and opening them downstream of Chicago, and the freight tunnels were drained into the Chicago Deep Tunnel
Tunnel and Reservoir Plan
The Tunnel and Reservoir Plan is a large civil engineering project that aims to reduce flooding in the metropolitan Chicago area, and to reduce the harmful effects of flushing raw sewage into Lake Michigan by diverting storm water and sewage into temporary holding reservoirs...

 system. The leak was eventually stopped by Kenny Construction, a private contracting company, by drilling shafts into the flooded tunnel near Kinzie Street and placing emergency plugs in it.

Aftermath

It took three days before the flood was cleaned up enough to allow business to begin to resume and cost the city an estimated $1.95 billion. Some buildings remained closed for a few weeks. Parking was banned downtown during the cleanup and some subway routes were temporarily closed or rerouted. Since it occurred near tax day
Tax Day
In the United States, Tax Day is a colloquial term for the day on which individual income tax returns are due to the federal government. The term may also refer to the same day for states, even where the tax return due date is a different day....

, the IRS
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...

granted natural disaster extensions to those affected.

Eventually, the city assumed maintenance responsibility for the tunnels, and watertight hatches were installed at the river crossings.

Insurance battles lasted for years, the central point being the definition of the accident, i.e., whether it was a "flood" or a "leak." Leaks were covered by insurance, while floods were not. Eventually it was classified a leak, which is why many residents still call it the "Great Chicago Leak."

Today, there remains contention as to whether the mistake was the fault of the workers on-site, their parent company, or the faulty maps provided by the city of Chicago which failed to accurately depict the old tunnel systems. In fact, the Kinzie Street river crossing did not descend as deeply under the river as any of the other crossings.
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