The first arctic blast of winter socked Chicago Tuesday, driving thousands into city shelters, stalling cars and prompting a warning from Mayor Richard Daley on the hazards of using stoves or space heaters to ward off the cold.
Urging tenants to call 311 if temperatures in their residences fall below 63 at night or 68 during the day, Daley said, “A visit from the Buildings Department is better than one from the Fire Department.”
Fire Commissioner James Joyce said 55 people died last year in Chicago fires, many during periods of cold weather. The 2003 death toll was seven more than the year before but 14 fewer than 2001.
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Arctic air from Canada pushed the temperature to 5 degrees below zero in some outlying suburbs with windchills of 20 below across much of the area Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. A slow warming trend was forecast to begin on Wednesday with a high in the lower 20s and a nighttime low in the teens.
At least two deaths were being investigated as cold-related on Tuesday.
Jeanette Balkey, an 82-year-old Hodgkins woman, had collapsed on her kitchen floor Tuesday morning when a Meals on Wheels deliverer found her.
Her mobile home was so cold, Hodgkins police Lt. Mark Wilkans said, that a gallon of milk perched on her kitchen counter was frozen when police arrived. The heat in her home was turned off, although the thermostat was in good working condition, he said.
Balkey was still alive when police arrived, but she was pronounced dead less than three hours later at La Grange Memorial Hospital.
Man, 90, was far from home
Stanley Maduzia, 90, was found dead in the snow beside County Line Road on the border of Kankakee and Iroquois Counties–far from his Northwest Side home.
A paramedic, who had been summoned to the scene where Maduzia’s white GMC van was found abandoned in a snowdrift, spotted the Chicago man’s body about a half-mile from the crash site.
“It wouldn’t have taken long for somebody in that kind of weather to succumb to the elements,” said Iroquois County Sheriff Eldon Sprau.
Maduzia, of the 5000 block of North Kolmar Avenue, left his house about 1 p.m. Monday to have the emission system on his van checked, his family told Sprau. Chicago police registered him as a missing person at about 9 p.m. Monday, Sprau said.
Maduzia’s neighbors could think of no reason for him to be so far from home. He usually took his vehicle to an emissions center close to his home, said his neighbor of 47 years, Steve Putyra.
Maduzia worked as a machinist for Continental Can Co. before he retired, Putyra said.
“We’re just stunned,” his wife Jean Putyra added.
Other than two bad knees, Maduzia was in relatively good condition for his age, they said.
He was very independent and never minded shoveling snow by himself, said his upstairs tenant, Victor Torres.
More than 340 calls for lack of heat poured into the city’s hot line as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, accounting for 264 different locations, according to Jack Beary, spokesman for the Chicago Buildings Department. For those calls, the city dispatches a team to the site and attempts to restore acceptable levels of heat. Landlords who do not restore heat can be fined up to $500 a day, Beary said.
The city also made calls to “vulnerable” seniors, who depend on life-sustaining equipment or have health problems that make them especially susceptible to the effects of the cold. “Seniors should postpone errands until the weather gets” more hospitable, said Tanya Mitchell, spokeswoman for the Department on Aging.
Downtown, people walked with hastened gaits and heads down, and most were well-equipped for the chill.
A few, however, were not.
“I didn’t think it would get this cold this fast,” said Ryan Kelley, 30, of Ft. Myers, Fla., as he hustled down Michigan Avenue with no gloves and no hat, his face a bright pink.
Vanessa Gorr, 19, of Arlington Heights was comfortable in the cold as she worked in her full-length beaver coat in front of Elan Furs, trying to coax people inside. Despite the weather, she said business was a little slow.
“It’s just too cold,” she said. “People don’t want to go out.”
Homeless shelters fill up
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In fact, many people who normally stay out were going “in,” according to Lisa Elkuss, spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Human Services. Out of about 5,900 beds in about 120 shelters, about 5,350 of the beds were filled Monday night, as even “chronic” homeless people headed for the safety of the indoors, she said.
Some shelters filled quickly, and the city offered free van service from overflowing facilities to those that had room, she said. The shelter rush could soon be over, she noted, as the extreme cold weather relents.
But the warming will be gradual, said National Weather Service meteorologist Robin Smith.
“When I say slow, I mean slow,” he said, adding that temperatures likely will not top freezing through Friday.