From: ptownson@eecs.nwu.edu (Patrick Townson)
Newsgroups: misc.misc
Subject: Questions About the Flood
Date: 17 Apr 92 07:40:00 GMT


  From: Will Martin <wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL>
  Subject:  Question about flood


> Last night I heard an announcement about on-street parking being banned
> all over the downtown area, and that parked cars would be towed (but
> could be picked up from the pound at no charge, due to the short 
> notice of the ruling). But it never said why. What was the rationale? 
> Was it just that the streets needed to be clear for all the service
> trucks from various utilities, agencies, and companies working to fix
> the mess? If so, I would have thought the parking ban would have been
> instituted days ago, when the mess first began. Any comments from you?

They tried allowing some parking for the first day or so and it caused
so much congestion in the streets they had to ban it. Also, they did
not get started pumping out the buildings in ernest until about 24 
hours had passed. 

> And I was amazed to see the TV news coverage of the *second* day of the
> flood when it showed the streets full of people who work in the flooded
> buildings and who came to work that morning after having been evacuated
> and sent home early the previous day. They acted amazed that they
> couldn't go to work that morning... What was going on? 

There was much confusion on Monday about who would be evacuated and
who would not be. There were buildings with no water on Monday which
none the less had the electric service to them killed later in the day
because the sub-station serving them was under water in the basement
of some other building, etc. And people were told the service would
surely come on the next morning, etc ... no one, not even city
officials realized the extent of the damage and the amount of time it
would take to recover (in fact, they are still sort of numb about
this, and saying 'any day now, things will be back to normal'. The
hell they will! We will be living with this for months, maybe years.

So companies evacuated Monday did tell employees to come in on Tuesday
in many cases, and they said that in good faith based on what the city
was saying, that surely those buildings without water could be put
back in service on Tuesday ... 

> I certainly wouldn't have gone to work the next day until I heard
> that things were back to normal in the building I was in -- was there
> no general public announcement and instructions to "stay home"?

No there was no general announcement simply because there are many
buildings perfectly useable all along other than Monday when the
electric was cut off in (what I think was) sort of an overkill. They
did not want to take chances Monday ... they had no idea where the
water would show up next or the danger of the electricity, etc so they
killed it all. Starting Tuesday there were many people back at work in
a lot of the buildings downtown -- after all, a million plus people
work downtown, the flood is affecting at best maybe half of those. The
others are still struggling to get to work on subways that are shut
down and looking for lunch in closed restaurants of the buildings not
in service, etc.  

Lasalle Street seemed to be hit hard but then it was spotty otherwise
with buildings in various (seemingly isolated) locations getting tons
of water ... apparently the old tunnels are blocked in some areas and
open in others, and the water runs to the lowest level it can find. So
there was much confusion Tuesday and Wednesday: who is back up and
running and who is not?  Due to the money involved, and the amount of
critical work waiting in the offices, etc everyone has played it by
ear and tried at the last minute to see if they were going to be able
to work that day or not.

Example: 36 South State Street, the North American Building. The
electric was off Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, yet they had only at
worst about five inches of water in the basement, compared to Marshall
Fields a block away with thirty feet of water. The electric was off
because the electrical substation serving the building is in the
basement of Carsons across the street ... and yet, there is also an
Edison substation in the basement of 36 S. State ... it does *not*
serve the 36 S. State building. So the NA Building sits mostly high
and dry, yet evacuated because Carsons cannot get the water out of
their basement.

The electric to 36 S. State was rerouted somehow, and the building put
back in service as of early Thursday morning -- the call went out to
employees in offices there to come to work Thursday for the first time
this week ... and what happened at 8 PM Thursday night? Edison says
the electric wil be going off in the building, probably for 24 hours
on Friday and Saturday because the rerouted transformer being used has
somehow developed problems of its own. So folks will come to work
there Friday glad to get back to work only to find they cannot get in
once again. 

The City Hall Office of Information and Inquiry is trying to keep on
top of all these things (dozens of examples like above) but it is hard
to have the information totally accurate .. so people are showing up
and wandering around. There is no danger to the people there, the only
reason they evacuated Monday was because so much was unknown then. Now
the only problem is the inconvenience of having no drinking water and
sporadic electricity as Edison goes about rewiring, etc.  

> I would have thought the streets into the affected area would have
> been blocked off, and all public transit into the region cancelled or
> re-routed around it, so that there would have been no way for those
> people to have gotten there in the first place that second day. Was
> this not done? Were the powers that be trying to act like "business as
> usual"?

But the thing is, for buildings west of Dearborn Street, things are
largely 'as usual' with certain exceptions such as the Board of Trade
and several buildings on Lasalle Street two blocks west. Do not ask me
how the water chose to go one way and not another; I guess the tunnels
are not always level and the water runs the way it is easiest to run.

Lasalle Street got hit hard as did the two major stores on State
Street (Carsons and Fields) ... others got scanty water in the
basement. But then the Pittsfield Building at 55 East Washington
(block east of State Street) got hit with 30 feet in the basement and
the water is *still* running as of Thursday evening. The Chicago
Temple Building at 77 West Washington (three blocks west) got a couple
feet of water in the basement, and yet City Hall which sits exactly
across the street kitty corner (northwest and southeast) got
innudated. 

Not having up to date reliable engineering information about the
tunnel has added to the confusion. No one seems to understand yet what
made the water go where it did, go where it is still going and yet skip
other places. 

So every day since Tuesday, more buildings have been coming back into
service and then either staying that way or suddenly finding their
electric has to be cut due to the substation serving them being in a
building nearby with water.

Fields has been pumping water out into the street since Tuesday
afternoon, and yet the water level is just as high as it was when they
started! Apparently the backlog in that branch of the tunnel is
unloading right into the basement as more space becomes available from
water being emptied out.

Everywhere you look on the streets downtown, portable generators and
sump pumps have been set up -- big industrial units, all with hoses
attached spewing their filthy water out into the street. People are
confused because they walk down one side of the street, get a certain
distance and a barricade forces them to cross the street and walk on
the other side for awhile, etc. 

> We've heard the IRS had announced a one-week extension to April 15
> tax-filing deadline for people affected, but just how this was defined
> was never explained. Have you seen details? Was it people whose tax
> preparers had offices in the flooded area? Or people who themselves
> worked in the flooded area? (Does anyone live in that area -- are
> there any apartment houses or condos there? If so, did they mean
> people who *lived* there?) How was this supposed to be proved?

The IRS itself is in a building which was evacuated Monday and part of
Tuesday. What the IRS meant was they will accept without penalty or
questions returns postmarked up to April 22 from any Chicago zip code
with no further questions asked. Returns up to 4-22 will be treated as
though they arrived on time. 

> The reports all seem to be rather confused about just what organizations
> were doing the construction work that precipitated this (if it wasn't
> the sabotage you've mentioned). 

City Hall has not gotten their story straight yet. They are scared
shitless to even hint at any sort of sabotoge;  such an act would be
unthinkable and no doubt lead to civil disturbances, etc. So they
found a guy they could fire for incompetence and are saying it must
all be the fault of the Great Lakes Dock and Dredging Company for
doing poor work on the pilings.

> At first we heard that the pilings had been just driven and penetrated
> the tunnel, and then that they had been driven some months ago, which
> weakened the tunnel (and perhaps caused that preliminary cavein which
> the cable-workers videotape showed) and that something else caused
> the actual break that began the real flooding. Was all this work being
> done by city crews? Or by private construction firms under city
> contracts? Or by private contractors working on private projects? I'm
> wondering who is going to be sued first... (I figure everybody will be
> sued by everybody else before this all settles, of course... :-)

Your guess is as good as anyone's. Like JFK, there will be a city
council hearing and an official record made ... a sort of Warren
Commission report.

The work was done by private crews under contract to the city. The
papers today said the workers were told to put the new pilings
*exactly* in the place the old ones had been, and to take out the old
ones. They say the old ones were left in place and the new ones were
put in 'close by' ... but apparently not in the specified place.
That's the latest version of the facts.

> What happened to that truckload of mattresses the TV news showed being
> taken to the hole the first day? Did they actually get sucked into the
> hole, or did they just float away downstream? Where did they come from
> -- Goodwill or someplace like that?

The mattresses all went down into the hole, and the mattresses along
with the quick setting concrete, gravel, sand and other junk tossed in
apparently served to slow the flow of water to a trickle. So where is
the continued build up of water in Marshall Fields and the Board of
Trade building (the other side of downtown!) coming from? Your guess
is as good as mine ... apparently the 2.5 million gallons estimated to
be in the tunnel is now draining out. But the city wont say that for
sure because they do not know for sure. 

You should see the mail I have gotten in the past few days from people
absolutely furious with me for challenging anything the Tribune and
Mayor Daley have to say ... 

I have been told flatly there are no rats in the tunnels, let alone
human beings ... a letter writer said I was in effect all wet for
saying that there is much structural damage to the buildings downtown
and some will ultimatly be torn down ... impossible, he said, the
Tribune said nothing about it ...

If I am so smart, how come I don't work for the city, they ask, saying
they are sure the city would love to have my services ... jeeze, I
would not have the stomach to work for City Hall ... haven't been able
to abide it for years. The stench is overpowering at times, and not
just from the backed up water standing all over the floor. 

The city that wants to deny there are rats now invading us because
their little homes were destroyed in the flood and deny that homeless
people come out of the ground at night in the south downtown area to
scavenge for food in dumpsters is the same city that has tried twice
to dig a hole between the old tunnel and the Deep Tunnel only to give
up twice when they discovered all sorts of utility lines that would
get disrupted by the digging. Lines they did not know about ...

So forget sabotoge for a minute and take the city's explanation of
events; where does that leave them when (by that version) they were
told many weeks ago of the impending danger, shown pictures etc and
chose to ignore the messengers ... if you are not part of their crowd
at city hall you can remain silent.  

The city which says 'nonsense' to stories about pending building and
street collapses due to the extreme amount of water now in the soil is
the same bunch which was going to tear down the elevated structure a
few years ago rather than spend the money to maintain it ... and had
they done so, desparately needed rapid transit service here would be
totally crippled now ... as it is the trains are being rerouted
through the downtown area on the old elevated tracks; a structure
which is alleged to itself be about 90 percent rotted out over the
decades. 

These were the people who wanted to run their own electric company
last year ... and had the nerve to call those of us who opposed them
'stooges of Commonwealth Edison'. 

Other than this media, I have given up speaking to anyone about
anything in this city. They seem to forget that some of us *are*
downtown in the early morning at times and see the homeless people.
They seem to think we cannot see leaks and erosion in the subway
tunnel. 

For maybe twenty years I was a civic minded person here, and always
part of civic betterment committees, etc. I was involved with our City
Council assisting a couple of aldermen for years. I have been involved
with the public library as a volunteer, and with the Salvation Army
Emergency Service, going to fires to help clothe and feed the victims,
as well as serve food to firemen. For years I talked up Chicago to
anyone who would listen. I was on the council of advisors for the
Chicago Temple Building during the late sixties; and promoted various
speakers coming to speak there including Dr. MLK on several
occassions. I argued with the first Mayor Daley about things I did not
like, did numerous talk shows including Larry King and others. The
routine was always the same. Who the hell are you to speak up? What do
you know about anything, etc. 

For ten years now I have said to hell with them all. Atlas Shrugged. I
no longer please anyone but myself. I only hope I am out of here
before there is another serious tragedy like this past week. 


Patrick Townson
Newsgroups: misc.misc,rec.humor