Even in a normal year, the Loop on Easter Sunday is not a crowded place. Few churches are there, and most downtown businesses observe unofficial blue laws that keep them closed on Sundays.
On Easter, 1992, as flood waters of less-than-biblical but still impressive proportions rested below it, the Loop was more sparsely populated than usual.
Unless, that is, you count emergency workers. In anticipation of a Monday that was expected to bring to most buildings a restoration of business close to usual, the area was flush with men and women draining water slowly from subbasements and attempting to apply smelling salts to cold-cocked mechanical systems.
The symbol of State Street, Marshall Field`s, made plans to reopen at 11 a.m. Monday, and hand-lettered signs in the windows of a number of nearby stores and restaurants promised that they, too, would rejoin the economically alive Monday, one week after the flood was first noticed.
Government was to begin again on Monday, with the reopening of City Hall and the County Building. And at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, which unshuttered itself on Sunday, musicians playing at a jazz brunch almost made a visitor forget the chugging of generators elsewhere in the area.
”I expect the Loop will be close to full operation tomorrow,” Mayor Richard Daley said at a press conference Sunday afternoon, but city officials suggested that Loop workers call their places of business to be sure before venturing down.
Hot water and air conditioning were expected to be rarities, and at least 11 Loop buildings were still unable to accept electricity Sunday, according to Commonwealth Edison. They are unlikely to be open Monday (see list at end of story). Carson Pirie Scott, Field`s` neighbor and competitor, probably won`t open until next week at the earliest, said its manager.
While it may become the domain of the beige trench coat once again Monday, Chicago`s central business district Sunday had a far more exotic tinge to it, like a scene from the bottom of a snake charmer`s basket.
Though only 35 actually had water in the basement, it seemed as though every third building along State and LaSalle Streets had lengths of blue hose or silver piping crawling out of it and into a sewer.
And in officially sanctioned defiance of the continuing downtown parking ban, trucks bearing urgent-sounding names dotted the streets: Catco Catastrophe Cleaning and Restoration, Munters Moisture Control Services
(1-800-I-CAN-DRY), Ultimate Disaster Restoration, Sludge Dewatering Mobile Dredging and Pumping.
The Sludge Dewatering truck was parked near City Hall, which may explain why the latter word was bureaucrats` operative term Sunday for what workers are trying to do with the flooded freight tunnels now. As of late Sunday, city linguists had apparently not yet pointed out that ”dewater” may be in big dictionaries, but so is ”deplane” (meaning to get off an airplane) and nothing says H20 removal like the simple word ”drain.”
In order not to destructurize Loop buildings, the city has asked that flooded buildings limit draining of their basements, building managers said Sunday. Rapid pumping not only increases structural pressure in flooded tunnels and basements, it also threatens to dislodge the plugs that were keeping new Chicago River water from spreading through the freight tunnel system.
Most buildings pumping out water Sunday were doing so only enough to keep water levels stable, although there was not an official ban on pumping, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.
To cite one example, in Field`s flagship, where the subbasements took on water last week like a frigate wounded by cannon fire, the second subbasement was still full of water Sunday and the higher first subbasement had about 1 1/ 2 feet on the floor, said spokeswoman Laura Sandall.
At 120 S. LaSalle St., a building whose principal tenants are the LaSalle National Bank and Kemper Financial Services, workers pumped out the underground water in order to minimize damage to a bank vault, said Mike Kurzman, executive vice president of The Lurie Co., which owns and operates the building.
From 10 1/2 feet of water at a level about 40 feet below the street, the building Sunday afternoon was down to less than a foot, said Kurzman. Makeshift plugs kept additional water from coming in, but the building would likely remain closed for another two weeks.
Kurzman, his wife and two children enjoyed Easter in the dimly lit first- floor command center, where backup DC power allowed two elevators to remain in service.
The doors of one elevator, though, kept opening and closing on Sunday, highlighting a city Health Department warning posted inside: ”Do not drink water from any source in this building.”
”I`ll go on the David Letterman show with my Ten Better Ways to Spend Easter,” Kurzman said.
About 35 people were working in the building, and when the water was all drained, said building manager Gary Wood, restoration crews were to begin the cleanup in a subsubbasement he described as ”the Twilight Zone” and Kurzman called ”a polluted beach.”
Further down LaSalle, in the giant Board of Trade building, a complex and costly engineering process was under way.
Workers were essentially replicating the flooded subbasement mechanical systems on street level, said chief engineer Guy Richards.
A truck labeled a ”Patented Mobilized Cooling Tower” stood on LaSalle Street to the east of the building as hoses from it led inside. There, if everything went according to plan, they would keep the trading floor cool on Monday.
Hot water would be the next system to be duplicated in the open air, said Richards. ”It`ll be three months before that boiler gets straightened out,” he said. ”This is quite challenging. If it works, I`ll like it even more.”
Here are the 11 buildings that Commonwealth Edison said still were without electricity: 1 N. LaSalle, 1 N. State, 17-25 N. State, 19-29 E. Madison, 222 N. LaSalle, 226 N. LaSalle, 25 E. Washington, 30 N. Wabash, 547 W. Jackson, 31 E. Jackson, 339 S. State.
