A washing machine is floating in Daniel Ortiz’s basement.
The Waukegan resident knows he probably lost some keepsakes, like a camcorder with videos of his kids on it, and will also probably have to throw out some of their clothes and toys.
But as of Wednesday morning, with the first two rounds of severe thunderstorms past and one more to come, he was just waiting.
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“Until this water goes down, I can’t do anything,” he said, standing in ankle-deep water in his front yard, a real improvement over the knee-deep water that had gushed from a pond on the other side of McAree Road through the playground and fields of Glenwood Elementary School and into his backyard.
The city of Waukegan was hit by heavy rain starting around midnight, but flooding didn’t start to be an issue until about 1 a.m., Waukegan Public Works interim director Mike Hewitt said.
Flooding spread across the low-lying areas of Waukegan, in particular residential areas near water features like a retention pond, city spokesman David Motley said.
“The rain just didn’t seem to stop,” Hewitt said, adding that if the waves of rain continue, the flooding could get to the level of a “500-year storm.”
He added that multiple crews were brought in as the night moved into the morning, and they started getting more calls, in particular around 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. and then moving into 6 a.m. when people started waking up.
Hewitt pointed to flooding he experienced about 20 years ago where the water undercut a road, lifting it away and destroying it. This storm isn’t there yet, he said, but if it keeps up, the city could experience that.
The city’s public works department was putting out barricades around 9 a.m. to block off flooded roads and cleaning inlets so that garbage doesn’t prevent the water from going into the stormwater system.
Road closures on most of the city’s east-west roads turned Waukegan almost into an island, Motley said.
He warned against driving through flooded areas as vehicles can get stuck and letting kids play in the water, which is full of bacteria and garbage.
He added that when he was on his way to meet with public works early Wednesday, he stumbled across a driver stuck on Golf Road at North Lewis Avenue.
A section of Washington Street between Green Bay Road and Route 41 in Park City was also closed and a car was stuck in the water there, said Brooke Hooker, a spokeswoman for the Lake County Department of Transportation.
“Unfortunately, in times like these when the roads are flooded, people attempt to make it through and they get it stuck,” Motley said. “Now they’re an issue and their car has to be removed. They’re just creating additional hazards.”
Reporter James Newton contributed.
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