The wettest year in recorded Chicago history, 2008, saw flooded basements across the area. Street closures were common, along with weather warnings that spelled calamity on a seemingly daily basis.
The nearly 50 inches of precipitation made the year one to remember, and now, two years later, flood victims are still trying to deal with the aftermath.
Moldy basements and cracked foundations as well as health and financial problems still plague many Cook County residents. Some of them recently crammed a meeting room at the Des Plaines Public Library to seek assistance.
Officials with the Cook County Disaster Grant program are offering more than $10 million to help those in the county affected by the storms and flooding that happened between Sept. 13 and Oct. 5, 2008.
The money has to be spent by the end of September. In coming weeks, the agency will hold similar sessions in River Grove, Melrose Park and Elmwood Park.
Those eligible for assistance include residents, nonprofit groups, churches, hospitals and anyone who assisted flood victims.
“Every single person who fills out an application will have someone who will visit them” to find out what happened, said Barry Croall, the program’s grant manager.
Croall says he hopes to assist 1,000 applicants by the end of the summer. The average claim is worth about $8,000, he said.
The money will not be used to reimburse victims for repairs already completed. The primary focus, Croall said, will be on removing mold and providing financial relief, but the grants also can be awarded to those suffering health problems related to the flood. In some cases, financial assistance even could be used to cover school fees that families can no longer afford because of flood-related expenses.
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Flooding has been a recurrent problem in Des Plaines, where a five-mile section of the Des Plaines River snakes through the community, putting hundreds of homes and businesses at risk, officials say.
Over the years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has developed a flood control plan that calls for a series of levees and reservoirs that officials say will take another five or six years to complete. So far, a levee in Des Plaines has been built on the east side of the river while farther upstream, another in Mount Prospect is under construction.
“Ideally, we want four reservoirs and two levees, and they’re all upstream from Des Plaines,” said Tim Oakley, director of public works and engineering for the community. “It’s going to help the situation, but there’s no real permanent solution.”
Given the location of their homes, some homeowners will always be at risk, he said.
Peter Bacik, 48, of Des Plaines, was among the more than 100 people who attended the session in Des Plaines, where he filled out an application for assistance.
The flooding, he said, left him with roughly $100,000 in damage to his home on Big Bend Drive, which backs up to the Des Plaines River. Often flooded, the street is a magnet for high water.
Bacik said he had 8 feet of water in his basement. Each home on his cul-de-sac became an island when water spilled into the street, he said.
“Things happened so quickly,” recalled Bacik. “We went down like the Titanic.”
Bacik said he received financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but that it wasn’t enough to cover all the repairs. His garage doors haven’t worked since the flood, and his driveway was badly damaged by construction and cleanup crews, he said.
At this point, any assistance would be a gift, he said.
Gina Martin, 51, of Elgin, said she has all but given up hope that anyone can help her. After the flood, her cinderblock home in Elgin was condemned and torn down. Martin has been sleeping on the couch at her mother’s home in Bartlett.
A flight attendant for Southwest Airlines, Martin said that she has run into a series of problems with her mortgage company and that her property is in foreclosure. She came to the meeting in Des Plaines out of desperation, she said.
“I now owe more than what I paid for the house,” she said, adding that she recently received a phone call informing her that she needed to have homeowner’s insurance even though the house no longer exists.
A Des Plaines resident, Urszula Zielonka, 54, says she hates her house on South River Road near the river. She said she has three backup pumps and three generators and becomes a nervous wreck whenever the weather calls for rain.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” said Zielonka, who would love to sell her home. “I’m too old to deal with the situation every time it rains.”
When the storm hit in 2008, her house took in water in the basement; her detached garage also was flooded, she said.
“We practically don’t do anything (to the house) anymore,” she said. “What’s the point?”
Zielonka said she hopes she will qualify under the grant program to have her basement and garage fixed. If she were able to sell her home, she would most likely buy a condominium or a townhouse, “as long as it doesn’t have a basement.”
At Ray and Susan Grish’s home on Crabtree Lane in Des Plaines, mold is growing on the basement walls, they say. When it rains, the couple say they can smell it.
The flood dumped several inches of water into their basement when a nearby creek overflowed. They wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to just rip everything out of the basement right down to the concrete.
“I’m grateful to have it when it rains,” said Susan Grish. “I just don’t go down there anymore.”
For more information on qualifying for the program, call 312-603-7600.