A leaky 4-inch water pipe flooded a downtown electrical substation Thursday, cutting power to three buildings in a 19-block area in Chicago’s Loop, snarling traffic, interrupting shopping and causing lights to blink in offices, including the Daley Center courthouse and City Hall.
Elevators at the Daley Center shut down, and escalators at Marshall Field’s and the Thompson Center locked to a halt. Field’s customers looked around in puzzlement as lights dimmed for a few moments.
Water Management Department spokesman Tom LaPorte said workers would have to excavate the pipe to see what caused the leak. The pipe serves a bathroom in a CTA elevated train station, he said.
At about 3 p.m. water started leaking into the substation at the Block 37 construction site, 121 N. Dearborn St., Commonwealth Edison spokesman Jeff Burdick said. Shortly after that, a high-voltage feeder line supplying River Center, a converted warehouse at 111 N. Canal St., blinked out.
Although power was restored a half-hour later, a second line supplying much of the central Loop went out at 4 p.m., followed by another line at 4:20 p.m., Burdick said.
Nine blocks between Lake and Madison Streets from LaSalle to Dearborn Streets, and 10 other blocks from Madison to Adams Streets between LaSalle and Wabash Avenue, were affected, he said.
“Some buildings experienced a flickering of lights because power was [automatically] rerouted from other lines,” said ComEd spokesman John Dewey. “Power was not lost for the majority of the 1,500 customers served by the substation.”
As of 9:30 p.m., only a single building, 20 S. Clark St., remained partially without power, Dewey said.
Dearborn was closed from Madison to Washington Street for part of the afternoon as Water Management and Fire Department crews removed water from the substation, said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications. Extra traffic control aides were dispatched, he said.
No customers went without water because of the leak, Smith said.
Emergency, Water Management and ComEd trucks filled the streets, and rush-hour traffic was rerouted in the Loop, creating traffic snarls.
Columbia College Chicago student Morgan Scopes, 23, who was on the 10th floor of the Daley Center for an investigative reporting class, was told he and others would have to take stairs. “We were told we couldn’t use the elevators,” Scopes said.
Security employees and Illinois State Police Lt. Luis Davila said lights started to flicker at the Thompson Center at 3 p.m. and again at 4:45 p.m.
“You would hear it every time there was a surge–the fans powered down and the lights dimmed,” Davila said. Andrea Schwartz, spokeswoman for Field’s State Street store, said the lights in her office flashed on and off Thursday afternoon, but that cash registers and computers were not affected.
Below ground, CTA workers at the Red Line’s Washington platform said security surveillance monitors went black sometime before 3:30 p.m.
CTA spokeswoman Ibis Antongiorgi said trains were not affected, but four northbound Dearborn bus routes–the No. 22 Clark, the No. 24 Wentworth, No. 36 Broadway and No. 62 Archer–were rerouted to State between Monroe and Randolph Streets.
Outages in the Loop were sporadic. The Borders Books & Music store at State and Randolph was not hit by the power outage, store employees said.
