Another blistering summer day with no breeze and no sign of relief baked the Chicago area Thursday, overwhelming paramedics, buckling a section of North Lake Shore Drive, forcing cancellation of some medical procedures and sending public-housing employees door to door to check on tenants.
A 9-year-old boy was critically injured when he was struck by a car while playing in the spray of an open fire hydrant in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood Thursday afternoon, police said. The boy suffered head injuries and was admitted to the University of Chicago Hospitals.
Throughout the city, officials said, as many as 1,600 fire hydrants remained illegally opened at the same time Thursday, leaving many residents and businesses with agonizingly little water pressure.
While hospitals reported scattered incidents of heat-related illnesses and injuries, officials in Cook and surrounding counties said they received no reports of deaths related to the weather. Prompted in part by the heat wave of 1995, when more than 700 deaths in the area were listed as heat-related, cooling centers were set up in public and private facilities to provide comfort for people without air conditioning.
The National Weather Service, which issued a heat warning for the area Thursday, said continued hot and humid weather was expected for at least the next five days. Temperatures were expected to exceed 90 degrees each day and remain in the 70s during the nights.
“We’re not seeing anything cooling off for a while,” said Christine Kurash, a Weather Service meteorologist. “Unfortunately, we don’t even have a light lake breeze.”
The official high temperature Thursday at O’Hare International Airport was 95 degrees, recorded at 3 p.m. The record for any June 25 is 103 degrees, set in 1988.
The heat heightened the pace at Chicago’s 911 center on the West Side. Officials said they received about 950 calls an hour Thursday–up 50 percent to 75 percent from the norm. Overall, calls for Fire Department paramedics were up about 30 percent, officials said.
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One Chicago paramedic said crews were scrambling to keep pace with calls for help.
“They are just giving them run after run after run,” said the paramedic, who asked not to be identified. He noted that paramedics were so overtaxed that ambulances from the Northwest Side were responding to calls on the South Side.
On the 5700 block of South May Street, an open fire hydrant led to tragedy when Javond Standley, 9, was run over by an early 1980s model Oldsmobile about 1:30 p.m., authorities said. More than a dozen children had gathered to splash in the water–and although at least three adults were supervising and slowing traffic, the car drove into the crowd.
“The car had stopped, and then it started inching in and inching in,” said one witness, Lisa White, 21. “Then the boy ran through toward a puddle, and the car drove on.”
Other children gathered around the car and pounded on its windows, yelling, “There’s a baby underneath!” she said. But the driver moved the car forward a few feet, then back, before driving off, she said.
No one was in custody Thursday night in the incident.
Some medical services in the area were affected by concerns about the reliability of Commonwealth Edison Co. power. Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Hines Hospital near Maywood canceled all surgery and radiation treatment Thursday, fearing fluctuations in power would endanger patients.
“Rather than take the chance of having a power surge or having something else happen, we thought it was better to err on the side of caution,” said hospital spokeswoman Pam Surges. “More power or less power would vary the dose of radiation.”
But that was little solace for patients such as Brian Prince, 32, who was unable to get his scheduled radiation treatment on a skull-based tumor. He said hospital staff told him, “Sorry, Mr. Prince.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” said Prince, a salesman-broker for a Chicago commodities firm. “It’s not like they’re fixing my car. What are they going to do tomorrow or for the rest of the summer? What do I have to do, wait for September or October?”
The heat wave caused the cement pavement to buckle in two southbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive near Wilson Avenue about 5 p.m., forcing the closing of the Wilson on-ramp during rush hour, police said. No accidents related to the buckling were reported.
At Chicago Housing Authority complexes, employees have been making two sweeps a day during the hot weather, checking on residents, said Ed Pratts, a CHA housing manager. Tenants, many of whom don’t have air-conditioning units, also have been given cards they can stick in a slot on their doors to let workers know they don’t need assistance.
The CHA has committed to spend $10 million over the next five years to add central air conditioning or individual units in apartments, said George Phillips, the CHA’s assistant director of operational services.
For Willie Wilkins, 64, a retired barber who lives at the Parkside and Lake Senior Apartments on the West Side, those units can’t come fast enough. He said he can’t sleep at night in his cramped eighth-floor apartment because of the heat.
Mary Prentice, 63, a retired nurse who lives on the South Side, said the best way to keep cool was to go au naturel.
“I take a cool shower, come out and don’t put nothing on,” said Prentice, who lives in a ninth-floor apartment. “That’s about all you can do.”