It wasn`t even 6 a.m. Monday, but Bill McGing, the overnight boiler room engineer at the Merchandise Mart, already knew that this was no ordinary start to another workweek.
Water was inexplicably pouring into the third and deepest subbasement of the building. Realizing that something was very wrong, McGing grabbed a nearby telephone and called the Chicago Fire Department.
It was 5:57 a.m.
”He actually heard the sound of the water rushing in,” said Thomas Kennedy, executive vice president for the Merchandise Mart.
Within minutes, the first firefighters arrived, and the department had a command post set up at the scene by 6:10 a.m., Kennedy said. Soon after, workers from the city Water and Sewer Departments arrived, searching for what they first thought was a sewer line problem.
Flooding reports then began trickling in from other Loop landmarks, including City Hall and Marshall Field`s.
More Top Picks Best Zero Turn Lawn Mowers
By 7:30 a.m., when sewer worker Willie Jinkins arrived at the Merchandise Mart, the Mart`s bottom two subbasements had filled with water. Workers struggled to pump the water out of the basement, but the level kept rising.
”The more it pumped, the more it came,” Jinkins said. ”You could see fish and some water down there. We didn`t know where it was coming from.”
Another worker found out. He noticed that a whirlpool had formed in the Chicago River near the Kinzie Street bridge. By then, it was about 8 a.m.
Soon, Commonwealth Edison was getting calls from building managers in the Loop. They reported flooding in their basements, and Edison officials warned them that the water could short out switch boxes.
That meant turning off power, which meant evacuating workers. The office building at 10 N. LaSalle St. was being cleared at 8:30 a.m. And at 9:15 a.m., the square-block building that houses City Hall and Cook County offices was closed.
By 9:30 a.m., city workers and the Army Corps of Engineers were bringing two truckloads of gravel to dump in the river in hopes of plugging the hole.
At 10 a.m., Mayor Richard Daley held a City Hall news conference with Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco. The commissioner announced that fire officials, after consulting with Edison, had ordered power shut off in a substantial portion of the Loop.
The blackout area was bounded by the Chicago River on the north, Adams Street on the south, Dearborn Street on the west and Michigan Avenue on the east. Edison completed the shutdown in two increments, at 10:48 a.m. and 11:25 a.m., giving building occupants time to evacuate.
When the power went off, the Chicago Transit Authority`s State and Dearborn subway stations shut down. Englewood-Howard-Jackson Park trains, which operate in the State Street tube, were detoured onto the Loop elevated structure.
Southbound O`Hare-Congress-Douglas trains heading for the Dearborn station were turned around at Division Street; eastbound trains stopped at Racine.
To help out, CTA officials ran shuttle buses and at 11 a.m. started carrying people free on all buses and elevated trains coming out of the Loop. At 11:40 a.m., Metra began sending out additional trains.
Meanwhile, the threat of flooding was shutting down Chicago`s financial district. At 10:45 a.m., the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Board of Trade closed for the day.
Merc leaders said they were worried about the possible flooding of an Edison substation in the basement of Sears Tower that feeds power to the Merc. More importantly, they said, many of the Merc`s customers work out of Loop buildings that were being closed-a development that prompted the Chicago Board Options Exchange to close later.
Back at the whirlpool, large cranes perched on a floating dock began pouring gravel into the river about 11 a.m.
At 12:26 p.m., Daley arrived at the scene and climbed into the bridgetender`s tower to get a better look. With hundreds of spectators standing nearby, Daley told reporters that the gravel dumping was ”slowing it down.” Then he was off to a press conference with Gov. Jim Edgar and others. Edgar arrived at 3:11 p.m., as workers mixed quick-set cement to pour into the hole. And a barge full of mattresses waited nearby as a last resort. About 3:40 p.m., workers lowered a boom and started pouring the quick-set cement into the water, along with concrete chunks and more sandbags. By then, the whirlpool had slowed to a ripple.
But nearly three hours later, things hadn`t improved much at the spot where Bill McGing first spotted trouble.
At 6:30 p.m., 17 feet of water still sat in the Merchandise Mart basement. Pumps were working to keep the water level from rising.
”Luckily, we don`t need the boilers this time of year,” Kennedy said.