A week later, the Loop still shows the unmistakable signs of the flooding disaster, but signs of recovery also were in abundance on Monday.
Pumping of the underground freight tunnels had begun slowly, but the pace was expected to increase. City Hall, the County Building and Marshall Field`s on State Street were open, and even if they lacked hot water, the venerable buildings symbolized a tentative return to normalcy.
And the rush hour headache predicted for Monday morning because of flooding at Hubbard`s Cave on the Kennedy Expressway, never materialized.
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The first pumping began about 12:15 a.m. Monday near the main post office on Harrison Street. Four hours later, pumping began at a second site at Taylor and Franklin Streets.
Pumping, estimated at a combined rate of 4,800 gallons per minute, was reducing water in Loop basements at a rate of 2 inches an hour, said Lt. Col. Randall Inouye of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing flood relief.
”We`re going to continue to draw down at a very slow rate,” Inouye said. He has said that draining the tunnels of the more than 250 million gallons of Chicago River water will take about 12 days.
Transportation officials reported that Monday morning`s rush hour was smooth, with many commuters opting for Metra or the CTA to avoid the lane closures at Hubbard`s Cave.
”There are always tie-ups, but it was better than what normally would have happened,” said Illinois Transportation Secretary Kirk Brown.
Brown said that water pressure was dropping in the drainage tunnel under the Kennedy Expressway. But he declined to offer a timetable for reopening four lanes of traffic.
”We`re not out of the woods yet and won`t be until the tunnels are completely drained,” Brown said.
The Chicago Transit Authority`s State Street and Dearborn Street subways will not reopen until at least ”four or five days” after the freight tunnel is drained, CTA President Robert Belcaster said.
Trains will not run until officials are certain that air and environmental conditions are not hazardous; that the structural integrity of the tunnnels has not been compromised; and that signals and other equipment are working.
Inouye said there were four pumps operating at the two sites as of noon Monday. The three above-ground pumps at the post office were pumping 600 gallons per minute each. And a submerged pump at Taylor Street was pumping 3,000 gallons per minute.
Pumping began slowly and is being closely monitored because of fears that the fast-rushing water could cause the tunnel to collapse or damage nearby building foundations.
Shafts at those two sites reach into the top of the city`s underground freight tunnel. Water is being pumped to the surface, then into huge drains nearby leading into the Deep Tunnel.
At the post office Monday morning, workers began drilling a second shaft to reach into the freight tunnel, according to workers there.
A third site, at Grand Avenue near the river, would be used to pump water from the freight tunnel back into the river. Work there can only begin once it is determined that the water is not too polluted to be put back in the river. Additional pumping sites are being considered.
Pumping is the second phase of the complicated engineering project that first focused on plugging the original leak in the tunnel system near the Kinzie Street bridge. Three concrete plugs at that location now have cut off the flow of water from the river.
In a flood-related incident at Field`s early Monday, a security guard was stabbed by a man who apparently was stealing a leather jacket, police said. The guard was reported in good condition, but the suspect escaped. Supt. Matt Rodriguez warned businesses to be diligent, during flood relief efforts, about monitoring access to buildings.