Posted on 04/12/2017 6:15:21 AM PDT by Rebelbase
[snip]Before dawn, employees of the Merchandise Mart noticed two inches of water in the basement. They called the fire department. By the time firefighters arrived, that two inches had become two feet, on its way to 38 feet.
“Fish are swimming in the basement of the Mart,” said radio reporter Larry Langford.
Across the river, streetlights went out downtown. In the subway tunnels, water was cascading over open electrical circuit panels, so the CTA cut power to the trains. Electrical units across 24 square blocks of the city were shorting out, basements being a common location for transformers and air-conditioning systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.suntimes.com ...
I was there, working for the Chicago Transit Authority in their Merchandise Mart HQ. The Mart was the first building to have its basements start to fill with water. Both downtown subways flooded, and a CTA co-worker by the name of Bruce Moffitt became an instant celebrity, as he had previously written a book on the Chicago freight tunnels, ‘40 Feet Below’.
CTA’s engineering department was running 24/7, supporting the City and its contractors with blueprints and copies of drawings as needed. All of us who were working in or around the tunnels & subways had to get tetanus boosters.
After everything was sealed up and cleaned up, the City did throw us one heck of a thank-you party. I got to shake the mayor’s hand.
Interesting article. Thanks for posting. I had never heard of this.
The company doing the work got authorization first, before they proceeded to drive the new pilings.
There's a documentary on it.
That's not to mention the neglect of the seepage at the time. Can't remember where in the chain of command it wasn't given the attention it needed.
Actually, the tunnel inspector got thrown to the wolves. He did report what he saw back in February of that year, but it never got followed up on.
As for the location of the pilings relative to the tunnel, they had long ago rebuilt the Kinzie Ave. drawbridge. So that they could keep the old one (which was directly over the freight tunnel running under the river there) in service during construction, the new one was built slightly offset.
So, in 1991, when the contractor went to drive new pilings to protect the drawbridge, he was driving them right on top of the freight tunnel, which is now relatively offset from the relocated bridge above.
It was just one of those things...
I was there working at the Northern Trust backup site, which was by union station, just outside of the exclusion zone. I went for a walk downtown after work and it was eerie. No one at all in the entire loop area.
I was there. I actually got to go down into the tunnels at the source of the “leak”. As we passed the edge of the coffer dam I asked what would happen if it failed.
“You wouldn’t even know it.”
L
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