A water main break early Sunday in the Lincoln Park neighborhood flooded a condo building parking garage, caused the evacuation of a hotel and left a huge hole in North Clark Street that will tie up traffic for days.
The 36-inch concrete pipe burst about 4 a.m. in the 1800 block of North Clark, and crews stopped the flow of water about two hours later, said Tom LaPorte, spokesman for the city’s Water Management Department.
Fixing the main and the street will take three or four days, LaPorte said. Until then, Clark is closed between Lincoln Avenue and Wisconsin Street. North of LaSalle Drive and south of Dickens Avenue, Clark is open only to local traffic.
Vehicles, including the Chicago Transit Authority’s No. 22 and No. 36 buses, are being rerouted one block east to Stockton Drive, LaPorte said.
LaPorte declined to speculate on what caused the main to break, other than to note that it was early in the cold season for it to have been temperature-related.
Such pipes are designed to last 100 years, but LaPorte said the one that failed Sunday was laid in 1973. He said city engineers would take out and study the broken section to determine the problem. “Mains this size breaking is fairly uncommon,” he said.
In November 2002, a concrete pipe of similar size and age broke in the 3500 block of inner Lake Shore Drive. That break created a sinkhole that swallowed several parked cars and affected traffic in the area for several days.
That break was investigated for weeks, but LaPorte said Sunday that he was unsure of the outcome of the inquiry. At the time, speculation centered on corrosion in the metal wire that reinforced the pipe.
After the pipe burst on Clark Street, the force of the water carried tons of sand out from under the street, and as the water drained into storm sewers, it left buckled pavement and a beachlike scene along Clark and in the grass on the western edge of Lincoln Park.
Shortly after noon, as city workers worked to excavate the main with a backhoe on the east side of Clark, an adjacent western section collapsed. That left a crater large even by Chicago pothole standards: It was more than 20 feet long, stretching nearly curb to curb across the four-lane street.
The rupture sent water rushing into the below-ground parking garage at Hemingway House, 1850 N. Clark. Building managers declined to comment, but firefighters at the scene and several residents who did not wish to be identified said dozens of cars on the lower level of the two-level garage were submerged past the hood.
Commonwealth Edison Co. spokeswoman Meg Amato said about 500 customers lost power when water flooded a service vault. Electricity was restored by 10:15 a.m., she said.
Water service in the area was not affected because the main does not directly supply water to buildings, LaPorte said.
Another victim of the power outage and water damage was the Days Inn at 1816 N. Clark St., where guests were forced to leave after the lobby and basement were flooded and the power went out.
Around the corner from the hotel, Bar Louie manager Dan Schaal was overseeing the cleanup effort. He said the wooden bar was damaged by water and that the business might not be ready to reopen for a week, depending on the condition of the floor.
