They were urban refugees, workers who typically toil in the heart of Chicago who now found themselves laden with paperwork and scattered to lands beyond the Loop.
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They were people such as Marge Lester. An executive assistant in Arthur Andersen & Co.`s 10 S. LaSalle St. office, Lester found herself stationed Tuesday in Oakbrook Terrace.
”I live in Glenview, so I had to take two trains,” she said. ”I took one to Union Station, then the Burlington to Fairview Avenue in Downers Grove.”
From there, a co-worker picked her up and drove her the rest of the way. Lester didn`t have much choice. Her boss, who lives in Park Ridge, called her at home Monday night and asked her to join him at the Oakbrook Terrace office. They could be there for a week, she said.
For hundreds of people who normally work in the Loop, Chicago`s flood has jolted their daily routine for at least the next few days.
The closing of Loop buildings, for instance, forced 65 brokers and analysts from Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc., out of their office in the old Board of Trade building.
They were scattered Tuesday to offices from Barrington to Flossmoor.
”It took me an hour and a half this morning to figure out where everyone was,” said Robert Wise, a senior vice president and branch manager of the temporarily closed Board of Trade office.
About 125 Kemper Corp. employees were flown Monday night to a company office in Kansas City as a precautionary measure, in case the evacuation of the firm`s 120 S. LaSalle St. office caused problems, said Ira Nathanson, vice president of corporate communications.
Meanwhile, Nathanson said, up to 300 other company employees worked at home, their manager`s homes, Kemper brokerage offices or at the Long Grove headquarters of the financial services firm.
That`s what Kemper worker Marilyn Morrison did. And to tell the truth, she said, it wasn`t so bad.
”It`s nice to get a break from the city, to look at green grass and trees instead of brown buildings,” said Morrison, 28, a resident of Chicago`s Wrigleyville neighborhood.
Tuesday was equally altered for Craig Gies, a tax partner with Andersen. Had it been like any other year before tax deadline day, Gies would have been glancing out his 29th-floor window at 10 S. LaSalle St. at the gleaming statue of the goddess Ceres atop the Chicago Board of Trade Building. But on this day, Gies found himself peering out a 6th-floor perch at the parking lot of Lincoln Mall in south suburban Matteson.
Elevators at his downtown office, which occupies 10 floors of the 37-story LaSalle Street building, shut down Monday at 7:40 a.m., soon after water from the Chicago River surged into the building`s subbasement.
Gies quickly set to work at his firm`s other Loop location, 33 W. Monroe St. But that building was closed down at 11 a.m.
Avoiding further risk, Gies decided to set up shop at the firm`s south suburban service office, which not only is minutes away from his home but provides him with ample free parking.
Gies made his plans before it was decided late Monday that most of the firm`s operations could continue Tuesday at its Monroe Street address.
Monday night, the firm transferred about 900 packing cartons of accounting files and tax materials to the Monroe Street office from the LaSalle Street building.
Meanwhile, in northwest suburban Long Grove, Kemper employee Margaret Rozen was making the most of her change of venue.
After eating lunch Tuesday at the clubhouse of nearby Kemper Lakes Golf Club, she said, ”We watched ducks walking by. . . .
”Usually, I`d be looking up at the `L` tracks.”
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