Cleanup efforts continued Tuesday after a thunderstorm and heavy rains swept through the Chicago area, cutting power to more than 50,000 homes and businesses and causing hundreds of flight delays and cancellations at O’Hare Airport.
By midday Tuesday, 8,400 ComEd customers in the Chicago area were still without power. Service was expected to be restored to all customers by mid-afternoon including those in south suburban Crestwood and University Park which were hard hit by the storm, said Tabrina Davis, a ComEd spokeswoman.
In Chicago, a Michigan Avenue office building had to close for the day because its sub-basement, which houses electrical and mechanical equipment, was flooded with four feet of water.
As the level of the Chicago River rose, a city Transportation Department barge got trapped under the LaSalle Street Bridge, forcing officials to close the bridge for about two hours Tuesday morning, said Craig Wolf, a spokesman for the department. The bridge was not damaged and was reopened to traffic by 7 a.m.
In front of 360 North Michigan, which was closed after river water leaked into the building’s sub basement through an underground pipe, employees tried to minimize the costs of a day’s lost business, contacting clients on cellular phones and even making personal visits to their clients’ Loop offices.
Many had arrived at work as usual at 8:30 a.m. to find the building closed. They waited on the sidewalk until mid-morning, when they were told their offices would be closed for the day.
The flooding displaced about 800 employees in the newly-renovated building, said James Wilmouth, a spokesman for Douglas Elliman Beitler, which manages the building.
City departments received a barrage of calls and requests for storm-related services. On Monday, the city’s 311 non-emergency call center received 12,900 calls, a 30 percent increase over the daily average.
