As the recovery effort from the Great Chicago Flood continued Wednesday, one thing became clear: This won`t be over soon.
Across much of the north end of the Loop, lights came back on by 6 a.m. Wednesday and progress presented itself in mundane ways: Stores began to open, lunch smells wafted out of restaurants and a few customers ventured back, stepping over hoses spewing murky water into the streets.
But further south, across Washington Street, most shops were still dark, and emergency workers and police outnumbered shoppers on the noisy streets, where hulking yellow generators pumped power to the few banks and stores that were open.
And the news was especially grim for the Chicago Transit Authority. The water damage to the downtown subways could be as much as $25 million, CTA officials said. The subways may be closed for as long as two weeks because damage must be assessed, then repaired. But none of that can take place until the flooding stops.
A parking ban was put into effect throughout the downtown area. And at City Hall and the county building, flood waters that had been receding rose again for a while, and no one knew for sure why. City offices remained closed, as did the county building.
In some areas, the flood water imitated a seesaw. At the Grant Park South Garage, what once had been eight feet of water dropped steadily to less than three. But as the water poured out onto Michigan Avenue, some of it leaked back down into the basement of previously dry Roosevelt University, which then was forced to employ pumps of its own.
Most discouraging of all, the leak draining the Chicago River into Loop basements stubbornly remained open, leaving the nagging fear that all this work might have to be done again.
”It`s very frustrating. Sometimes you feel like you`re diverting the whole Chicago River,” said Tom Tocalis, building manager for the State of Illinois Center, where dozens of workers, including 30 state prison inmates, were trying again Wednesday to hold back water creeping from City Hall through an underground pedway.
Following Gov. Jim Edgar`s lead, President Bush on Wednesday declared Chicago a federal disaster area, making businesses, individuals and local governing bodies eligible for low-interest federal loans and other assistance. The announcement effectively makes federal money available for the cleanup and gives the city and downtown businesses, which have lost millions in the disaster, some help in getting back on their feet.
Under the declaration, the federal government also will pay 75 percent of the cost of restoring public facilities damaged in the flood, said Carl Suchocki, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington.
Wednesday night, Commonwealth Edison spokesman Mike Kelly predicted power would be back on Thursday to all but the Marshall Field`s store in the north end of the Loop, and all but 25 buildings south of Washington Street. All of those 25 buildings have basement flooding.
Just after noon, the city issued a downtown parking ban for city streets, covering the entire central business district from Wacker Drive on the north to Congress Parkway on the south, and from Michigan Avenue on the east to Canal Street on the west.
Within the hour, police were ticketing and towing cars in an effort to clear the streets for the emergency vehicles and repair trucks that have penetrated downtown like an invading army.
Irate drivers and thwarted delivery truck drivers cursed and ranted but, for the most part, obeyed.
The ban will last indefinitely.
At the County Building, where workers were ordered to come in and then sent home again when water levels began rising, at least two workers were carried out on stretchers and another two were helped out on their feet after becoming dizzy.
Officials first worried that carbon monoxide fumes from gasoline-powered pumps caused the problem. But those pumps had for the most part been replaced by 6 p.m. Tuesday with electric and air-driven pumps. When a Fire Department inspection turned up only traces of carbon monoxide, speculation put the blame on the diesel fumes rising from equipment parked in the streets below.
Subways in the heart of the city remained closed Wednesday, as did the Grant Park South Garage, where pumping was dropping flood water at a rate of an inch an hour. This was good news to workers who said that the water there had been rising and at one point Tuesday night had approached the ceiling of the lowest level.
”At least they got all the cars out right away. This could have been a lot worse,” said George Rawlinson, construction coordinator for the Chicago Park District, which owns the garage.
Workers in the city attributed the rising water in some buildings Wednesday to two problems: water still leaking into the tunnel system from the river, and the uneven rate at which water is being pumped out of individual buildings.
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Effectively, they said, all the buildings are linked into one system via the flooded underground tunnels and other passageways. If water is pumped faster out of one building, higher water in the others simply flows in that direction, evening things out.
Roosevelt University, though not linked to the tunnel system, Wednesday took on a little water of its own as water pumped from the Grant Park garage ran over the sidewalk in front of the building. Students responded by eagerly calling in to see if classes were canceled. They weren`t.
”We`ve had lots of calls, even from our Arlington Heights campus,” said Todd Ryan, director of the university`s physical plant. ”They`re hoping they`ll get another week before their tests.”
Meanwhile Wednesday, a Cook County judge denied a legal request to order the city not to destroy documents related to the flood.
The attorneys, representing G.P. Antons restaurant and lounge and the Merit Insurance Co., filed the first lawsuit of the flood Tuesday against the city, alleging it knew of damage to the underground tunnel and failed to act. Judge Everette Braden sided with city attorneys who said city officials had no intention of destroying records.