Residents along the rain-swollen Des Plaines River and Salt Creek in Chicago`s western suburbs warily watched floodwaters slowly recede Saturday while others in the area coped with the mess left by record-setting rains.
For many who hoped Friday`s historic 9.35-inch rainfall would be only an unpleasant memory by Saturday, the dirty job of cleanup had just begun.
And thousands of others were cautiously looking at the skies for more rain clouds that could prolong their distress.
Rain is forecast early Sunday, but only in the form of a light shower. It will be followed by 90-degree heat and high humidity, forecasters said. Scattered showers, accompanied by temperatures in the 80s or 90s, are expected again Monday.
Although most residents of the North Side of Chicago and the north and west suburbs had been nearly equally hard hit by the Thursday-night and Friday-morning downpour, which shattered all official weather records, the drainoff of that rain engorged the Des Plaines River and the smaller Salt Creek and caused flood damage that in many cases was worse than last October`s disastrous flooding.
Gary Jaeckel, an assistant in the Elmhurst city manager`s office, said as many as 800 homes in southwest Elmhurst were damaged by the waters of Salt Creek, and as many as 100 people sought refuge in an emergency shelter early Saturday at York High School.
Governments of nearby suburbs less severely inundated sent boats and trucks to Elmhurst to boat-lift residents trapped in their homes.
”This was a major evacuation procedure,” Jaeckel said. ”Dozens of boats from surrounding communities came in to help get people out.”
Mayor Edward Bluthardt of Schiller Park, where about 1,000 of the village`s 2,700 homes suffered water damage, said even little Crystal Creek, a tributary of the Des Plaines River, flooded Saturday, which didn`t happen last year.
”In October, we had almost a full day`s warning that the river was cresting,” he said. ”This time it came all at once, and we had no sandbags or anything.”
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As he did last year, Gov. James Thompson arrived in the flooded western suburbs by helicopter Saturday and led a two-dump-truck convoy through Des Plaines, Addison and Elmhurst, three of the suburbs most severely hit by the flooding.
Garbed in Des Plaines Fire Department hip waders and standing in the bed of an orange dump truck, the governor was accompanied by Cook County Sheriff James O`Grady, Des Plaines Mayor John Seitz and Chuck Jones, head of the state Emergency Services and Disaster Agency. They rode through the flood-stricken suburb, often stopping to talk to flood victims standing outside their damaged homes.
In their wake was another orange truck carrying reporters documenting the governor`s tour and his conversations with flood victims.
”When an act of God dumps 9 1/2 inches of rain on you, I don`t know what you can say to people,” Thompson said. ”I just try to tell them that we understand and that we`re going to help them the best we can and then tell them that, under the law of averages, it won`t happen for another 200 years.” Thompson`s words presumably were of little comfort to about 1,000 families forced from their flooded homes by the rainstorm, the aftereffects of which were still being felt Saturday night. Even a small decline in river and creek levels did not allay their fears, for they remembered how they had been similarly routed just last fall.
Thompson said his staff would continue inspections to determine whether the governor should ask President Reagan to declare the Cook County and Du Page County vicinity a disaster area, making it eligible for low-interest rehabilitation loans. He said representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency are expected to arrive Monday to conduct inspections to determine whether flood victims are eligible for federal aid.
It was short-term assistance that was sought Saturday by flood-plagued residents, some of whom were forced to evacuate as late as early Saturday afternoon, more than a day after the storm. Runoff had put the Des Plaines well over flood levels and swelled Salt Creek to 13 feet, 3 full feet over last October`s level.
Public-health officials advised people working to clean up possibly polluted stormwater to get tetanus shots as a precaution, and some suburban mayors in municipalities severely hit by flooding urged residents to boil water before using it to drink or cook.
In Des Plaines, where the fire department evacuated by boat 20 residents after the Des Plaines River unexpectedly began to rise until it crested about noon, the mayor`s office said volunteers were ”desperately needed” to help residents. Volunteers were asked to call 297-8182.
”We need people who are strong and willing to get dirty,” said Sharon Weiszmann, speaking for Des Plaines. She said special dumpsters would be placed at the end of several city blocks Monday to let residents get rid of flood-damaged objects.
Workers in American Red Cross mobile vans were helping mop-up operations by distributing kits containing a bucket, disinfectant and a mop.
Not everybody was as happy with their neighbors, however.
River Grove Mayor Thomas Tarpey, who said that as many as 70 percent of the 2,200 homes in his community had flooded basements, said a major reason his village had been savaged by floods twice in less than a year was his neighbors to the north.
”There`s too much building up north in Lake County,” he said. ”They`re turning fields into parking lots, and all of their water is running into the Des Plaines River.”
Tarpey said River Grove had sandbags packed and ready to use as early as Thursday night because, he added cynically, ”We wanted to be ready just in case the `100-year flood` happened again.”
In a remarkable similarity to last October`s flooding, the Des Plaines River crest moved rapidly downstream, an unpleasant aftershock to residents still reeling from the heavy downpour.
Early Saturday, about 50 families were evacuated from their homes in Park Ridge in the area of Dempster Street near the Des Plaines River, which was as high as 13 feet over its normal level. And, in Rolling Meadows, 147 of 180 families evacuated Friday will not be able to return to their homes until at least Monday. Those still homeless live in the Carriageway Court condominiums, which is adjacent to Salt Creek.
As the floodwaters moved south, other suburbs were hit. By Saturday afternoon, the crest had reached Riverside, where residents of about 70 homes were evacuated by boat.
In all, it was estimated that up to 1,000 residents along the river were evacuated or left their homes voluntarily as the waters rose on Saturday.
By evening, most municipal officials contacted said that they hoped the worst was over. But in nearly every case, they warned that another heavy rainfall, even of lesser volume than Friday`s cascade, could dramatically change the recovery process.
Remarkably, no further storm-related deaths were reported Saturday, after four on Friday.
Even for those who escaped the flooding that followed the nearly 10-inch rainfall, Saturday was still a day of work, discomfort, effort and salvage.
About 30,000 Illinois Bell customers in Roselle, Bloomingdale and the south portion of Schaumburg continued to go without telephone service Saturday, and company officials said it was doubtful whether service would resume until Monday at the earliest.
Dick Hill, a company spokesman, said a major switching station in Roselle flooded during Friday`s storm, knocking out all the telephones with the prefixes of 307, 351, 504, 529, 603, 613, 893, 894, 905 and 980. Persons calling those numbers probably would get a busy signal, he said.
About 50 telephone company workers were trying to dry out the equipment at the switching station this weekend.
Hundreds of Commonwealth Edison Co. workers also were out Saturday trying to restore electrical service to a remnant 2,500 customers who lost their power during Friday`s storm and still lacked current. Although some damage was caused by lightning, most was attributed to the rainfall, which flooded electrical equipment throughout much of northeastern Illinois. The outages were spotty and not confined to a single area, a company spokesman said.
The effects of Friday`s storm also were felt on the shores of Lake Michigan Saturday, when the Chicago Park District prohibited swimming at all city beaches because of the polluted water dumped into the lake by the Metropolitan Sanitary District. Near north suburbs were also testing lake water to determine whether to allow swimming Sunday.
Bob Nelson, head of the park district`s marine unit, said there would be no swimming at least until Monday, denying the lake`s cooling powers to thousands of residents expected to seek relief from 90-degree temperatures expected for Sunday.
”There`s no question about it,” Nelson said. ”We just close them. When you said that kind of effluent into the lake, we just automatically close them.”
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That kind of effluent was a record 1.5 billion gallons of stormwater that poured into Lake Michigan from the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Chicago locks at Wilmette and the Chicago River downtown.
Barbara Rumsely, speaking for the sanitary district, said the Wilmette locks were opened about 3 a.m. Friday after the Deep Tunnel system, designed to handle major rainfalls, filled to its billion-gallon capacity, forcing the district to use the lake as an emergency dumping ground.
Later Friday morning, the Chicago River locks were opened, although they were closed again Friday night. The Wilmette locks, however, remained open until early Saturday morning.
While the floodwaters spawned by an already legendary rainfall still posed a clear and present danger to some residents along the river banks Saturday, O`Hare International Airport, which had become a virtual island after Friday`s storm, was suffering an old-fashioned hangover.
Hundreds of stranded passengers who had made it to the airport Friday only to find that many scheduled flights had been canceled were still waiting in the sprawling terminal Saturday, hoping to board airplanes to take them out of town.
The city`s public transportation fleet, both buses and rapid-transit trains, were rolling Saturday on nearly normal weekend schedules. Friday`s rains had virtually paralyzed the O`Hare rapid-transit line and sent Chicago Transit Authority buses on wayward and meandering routes to avoid flooded viaducts and streets.
Things were not so normal, however, on many of the major arteries linking Chicago with the suburbs along the Des Plaines River. The Illinois Department of Transportation maintained a list throughout the day of major routes that were still flooded, making easy access to those suburbs impossible.
River Grove Mayor Tarpey said that by late Saturday afternoon, Belmont Avenue, which links his village with the city, was finally open, but, as one of the only alternate routes, ”It looks like the Dan Ryan Expressway.”