It has been a brawny but remarkably balletic show, each machine and man working in concert under the incandescent glare of the spotlights. In the backdrop is the darkness where the rest of Chicago sleeps.
By day, crews bore holes and dump piles of sandbags, rock and gravel into the ruptured underground tunnel. Except for the pack of news reporters and television cameras that dog the men in suits and ties, the scene isn`t much different than that on the lanes of the Kennedy Expressway, closed now for repair.
But ordinary street crews go home before nightfall. The flood repair crews do not.
As darkness comes, banks of towering, powerful spotlights blink on and blaze down. The hard hats glimmer.
The scene evokes the image of a children`s storybook-”Here Come the Builders!”-a tribute to the giant trucks, burly workers, steel beams and rock-solid concrete that shape our cities.
For nearly a week, workers have gathered here to dig, to drill, to dump and to try to stop the Chicago River from leaking into the century-old freight tunnel system that lies in the underbelly of the Loop.
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Friday, at the western foot of the Kinzie Street bridge, workers who had labored for five straight days battled fatigue. The dampness and the rising wind had grown tiresome.
Several dump trucks laden with sandbags and gravel sat to one side, engines idling, waiting to be called into action. Nearby several welders worked with torches to fuse lengths of 10-inch diameter pipe. A front-end loader lurched between a rock pile and empty dump trucks, scooping and dumping.
When the sun dipped and the spotlights took over, the scene was transformed.
The simple lines of trucks, their revolving yellow lights raking the night, formed an imposing convoy.
”Move him in here, Eddie,” a foreman roared, motioning with a furious wave. Eddie backed his truck up and disgorged a load of rocks into one of the holes. These are the holes that must be filled to stop the Chicago River from filling basements of downtown office buildings.
With surprising speed for so lumbering a vehicle, the next truck in the convoy backed up to the hole, emptied its load and pulled away.
”Get him out of here!” the foreman shouted, then waved in the next truck.
Much of the cargo disgorged by the trucks-first sandbags, later gravel-missed its target, spilling onto the muddy ground instead of into the holes. As each truck pulled away, dozens of men waiting nearby leaped forward and flung the spillover down the shafts. Shovels flailed, dumping gravel into the abyss. Dirty hands heaved 40-pound sandbags over the side.
The sounds were aggressive. Pipes banged and clanged as they were lifted, dropped. A generator droned in a low, throaty roar. Air brakes snorted. Truck doors slammed.
As they toiled, the sparks of welders sputtered and sprayed, bouncing off the ground like it was the 4th of July.
Off to the side a large bus packed with communications equipment spewed blue clouds of noxious exhaust.
Partially framed by the stiff necks of tall cranes, workers in knee-high rubber boots slogged through muck and water performing tasks only they understood.
Police stood at the side, ready to push back bystanders attempting to slip forward for a better view. At the Kingsbury Street entrance to the site, a fat police officer sat at the wheel of his squad car and ate a ham sandwich while waiting to check the identification of anyone wanting to cross the police line.
On the east side of the river stood the construction trailers where for the past week the flood-stoppers huddled over maps, gulped cold coffee and stubbed out cigarettes as they puzzled for a way to halt the water.
A crane operator chewed a sandwich in the cab of his machine. He wiped his lips carefully with a white napkin, though the back of his hand was smudged with river silt. He waited for the signal to raise the wire-the umbilical cord to the diver below.
One of those divers, Bud Dreas, 43, stayed submerged from 1:30 a.m. until 4 a.m. on Good Friday.
The water was ”cold, bitterly cold,” said Dreas. Armed with a crowbar and screwdriver he chipped away at the tunnel`s floor and vacuumed out the debris with a hose. Dreas has worked at sites all over the world.
Not all of the divers called to the Kinzie Street site will descend into the shafts. Some are just on standby; Dreas says he`s glad he is not.
Despite the conditions, he wants to go down once more. ”One for the road,” he said.
Curiosity seekers who had found their way to this normally obscure patch of the city watched in awed bemusement.
Trucks roared. Rocks clattered. Men shouted orders. Sparks leaped. It was better than a $7 show in any of the city`s movie palaces.