Chilled to the bone and with more zero-degree weather on the way, Chicagoans sank a little deeper into misery Tuesday as pipes and water mains burst and snow turned roads into demolition derbies or parking lots.
There were scores–possibly hundreds–of accidents, from spinouts and fender benders to a 20- to 30-vehicle pileup that closed parts of the Tri-State Tollway for hours.
Travel times were brutal, with trips of a few miles taking an hour or more, officials said. At least one traffic death was attributed to icy roads.
“There are crashes all over the place,” said Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Dave Furjanic. Well before the evening rush had started, police were checking into more than 100 possible accidents throughout the state’s tollway system, he said.
The problems may not be fixed by the Wednesday morning rush, the Illinois Department of Transportation cautioned.
Plows will be out overnight, spokesman Mike Claffey said, but “we’re going to be warning people that they should expect some slick and icy spots on the roads in the morning because we’re still expecting very cold temperatures overnight. If they’re driving … they should allow extra time for their commute.”
One big problem is that salt is ineffective when temperatures dip into single digits, even when mixed with calcium chloride, another melting agent state and city crews were using. There are no viable alternatives, experts said.
Although forecasts are not calling for more snow, high temperatures are expected to remain in the teens for at least a few more days, with lows occasionally dipping below zero, according to WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling.
Multiple crashes, 1 death
Slick roads, meanwhile, caused mayhem in every corner of the area.
Leszek Frackiewicz, 58, of Joliet was killed on Interstate Highway 55 near U.S. Highway 30 when the car he was riding in spun out about 9:30 a.m. and was hit by a tanker truck, police said.
His wife, Regina, 58, who was driving, was hospitalized with non-critical injuries, police said.
In Monee, April Jackson, 24, of Palatine apparently lost control of her car about 2:40 p.m. in slippery conditions, crossed the center line and hit a sport-utility vehicle on West Monee Manhattan Road.
She was extricated from her vehicle and taken to the Olympia Fields campus of St. James Hospital and Health Centers, where she was in critical condition, police said.
On the Tri-State Tollway, two pileups within five minutes of each other about 12:35 p.m. closed the highway at Ogden Avenue and at Half-Day Road.
The Ogden crash involved 20 to 30 vehicles–including six semi tractor-trailers and two buses–and kept some lanes closed for nearly 3 hours, but injuries were minor, state police officials said.
Jim Karl of West Dundee knew something was amiss when he saw the back end of the Pace bus begin sliding at a 45-degree angle.
“It was a melee, an absolute melee,” said Karl, 35.
At Half-Day Road, a chain reaction prompted by a two-truck accident caused multiple secondary accidents and closed the road briefly, police said. All lanes reopened around 2 p.m., police said.
There was little IDOT could do to clear the roads, Claffey said.
Plow drivers sent to clear road often found themselves stuck in the same traffic jams as everyone else, he said.
At O’Hare International and Midway Airports, some flights were delayed an hour or more Tuesday and more than 150 were canceled, but officials expected operations to return to normal Wednesday, Department of Aviation spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said.
Water mains break
Broken water mains also caused problems. Eight were reported broken through the city, including one that temporarily closed the intersection of West Ohio Street and North Clark Street in the early-morning hours.
West suburban Bellwood has had seven breaks since Thursday, and in far west suburban Aurora there were eight water main breaks Monday and one major water main leak Tuesday, officials said.
Water mains break or leak when the ground above them freezes, causing the ground to expand and put uneven pressure on the pipes below, engineers said.
The cold temperatures can also make pipes brittle.
What’s more, thawing after a hard freeze does the same thing.
“When there’s an extreme low temperature we have a little lag, then a few days or a week later, then breaks start happening,” said Steve Rajnic, supervisor of the Wheaton Water Department. “Then we get breaks again when it thaws.”
In Gurnee, a broken sprinkler pipe flooded parts of Woodland Middle School, staffers said.
Frozen pipes were reported by the hundreds in the city and suburbs.
Officials recommended residents leave a trickle of cold water running through one of their faucets, preferably one upstairs and farthest from the street, to help keep pipes from freezing.
In Chicago, firefighters used propane torches to heat the stems of frozen hydrants.
“We’d open the hydrant, and nothing would come out,” Chicago Fire Department spokesman Richard Rosado said.
Suburbs have own problems
The cold creates different problems in the suburbs.
In the huge bulbous water towers that dot the suburban landscape, freezing temperatures can create noise–loud noise.
When temperatures drop to about 10 degrees or lower, ice begins to form inside the tower, both on the surface of the water and on the sides of the tank. Ice cracks and breaks up as the water level rises or falls.
“It’s pretty loud. It can be alarming if you’re not used to it,” said Craig Ward, water superintendent in Oakbrook Terrace, home of a 500,000-gallon water tower on Butterfield Road west of Illinois Highway 83.
At the Brookfield Zoo, the polar bears and brown bears, at least, were coping fine. But even some of the lions and tigers were venturing out, no doubt encouraged by the fact that stones in the outdoor big cat exhibits have heating coils under them, keepers said.
The kangaroos also get a little cabin fever and bounce out into the cold, said Mike Brown, the zoo’s lead mammal keeper.
“They shouldn’t like this kind of weather, but we give them access and they go outside,” he said. “They would never see temperatures like this in the wild,” he said, but they get used to it.
———-
dgibbard@tribune.com
jkimberly@tribune.com
– – –
IN THE WEB EDITION
Visit us online throughout the day for the latest forecast, traffic updates, flight-delay information and other weather-related news at chicagotribune.com
