The crest of the flood-swollen Des Plaines River swept into Chicago`s western suburbs Monday night, overflowing the river`s banks to block major thoroughfares and swamp scores of houses in the worst flooding in 26 years.
Damage in the western suburbs, however, was not nearly as extensive as in Lake County, where one person is believed to have drowned and where Gov. James Thompson has declared a state disaster area.
Despite a respite from the rainfall late Monday night–a calm before the rainstorms that are predicted for Tuesday–officials reported river water levels continuing to rise well into Cook County.
And before the late-night lull, it was a day of chaotic weather developments: An afternoon storm swept in on high winds that hammered North Riverside, damaging a discount store and injuring 10. Floods forced the evacuation of a Des Plaines hospital, chased Gurnee police and firefighters from their stations and prevented 1,300 Lake County youngsters from attending school.
In Libertyville, police postponed until morning a search for a 20-year-old North Chicago man, missing and presumed drowned after an aluminum rowboat he was riding in capsized Monday afternoon. The man was identified as Victor Cruz, 1116 Lincoln Ave., in the far north suburb.
Police Cmdr. John Sayers said the man was boating, apparently for recreational purposes, with two friends on a flooded area of the Des Plaines River south of Rockland Road when their boat became tangled in trees. He said they fell in while trying to free themselves.
The man`s two companions–a 19-year-old Park City woman, and a 20-year-old North Chicago man–were rescued ”in good shape,” said Sayers, but they reported seeing Cruz go under and not come up.
Police postponed the search, Sayers said, because of darkness and bad weather.
The Des Plaines River was 6.5 feet over flood stage Monday, which is higher than any time since the spring floods of 1960 and only 0.4 of an inch below its highest level in the last 100 years, said Capt. Francis Winans, coordinator of the Lake County Office of Emergency Services.
Shortly before midnight, county officials reported that the river continued to rise. Lake County Sheriff`s Police Lt. James McGarvie also reported flooding along the Fox River and Chain O` Lakes.
The Des Plaines River, already above flood stage as it enters Illinois from Wisconsin, inundated hundreds of acres of land along its banks in Lake and Cook Counties. The crest, which swept through Lake County over the weekend, hit the northern Cook County suburbs Monday afternoon and the western Cook County suburbs Monday night.
To compound the problem, weather forecasters warned of heavy showers Tuesday and still more rain later in the week.
In River Grove Monday night, Darlene French, of the suburb`s police department, said: ”North Avenue is the only street open. We`re blocking everybody out of River Grove. The river is over its banks. All the side streets are flooded west of Cumberland Avenue.”
In Schiller Park police were able to reopen Lawrence Avenue, which had been closed earlier, but portions of Irving Park and River Roads remained shut down.
”It`s a mess,” said one Franklin Park police officer. ”I`ve seen streets flooded tonight that I`ve never seen flooded before,” said another.
As the crest swept through the northern Cook County suburbs, police in Mt. Prospect urged 400 residents of low-lying areas to leave their homes.
In Des Plaines, officials urged residents living near the river to evacuate; in Prospect Heights officials did the same to inhabitants of three apartment complexes in the town`s northeast corner.
Monday afternoon, 150 patients in Forest Hospital, 1717 Rand Rd., Des Plaines, were evacuated when the hospital`s basement flooded and the parking lot filled up with 4 feet of water. Patients were turned over to relatives or transferred to other hospitals.
The Mid-America Chapter of the American Red Cross estimated that 30 to 40 square blocks along a 9-mile stretch of the river was the hardest hit in Cook County, so far. The area included parts of Wheeling, Mt. Prospect and Des Plaines.
In Kane County where the Fox River was reported to be at flood stage, plans were being made to evacuate residents of low-lying areas of East and West Dundee and the Valley View subdivision near St. Charles.
The National Weather Service said that 1.02 inches of rain had been recorded for the 24-hour period ending at 7 p.m. Monday at O`Hare, the official Chicago measuring station.
This brought the official Chicago rainfall total for September to 6.51 inches, far below the 14.17 inches that fell in September, 1961, the wettest month in Chicago history. The average rainfall for the month, however, is 3.35 inches.
But in flood-soaked Lake County, officials said some communities have been drenched by more than 11 inches of rain in the last week alone.
Damage from the flooding so far has been estimated at as much as $30 million, although officials warned that exact figures will not be known until the rain stops and the floodwaters recede so that a full-scale examination of the damage can begin.
Federal government representives from Chicago, Michigan and Atlanta were due to arrive in Lake County this week to determine if it should be declared a federal disaster area. Such a finding would enable residents and business people who suffer flood damage to apply for low-interest, federally subsidized disaster loans.
The Central Weather Service forecast more rain for Tuesday but said that after that the area could get a respite of 24 hours or more. They warned that more rain is expected Thursday and Friday.
The rain, humidity and unseasonably warm temperatures are being carried into the Chicago area on a jet stream from the southwest, forecasters said. The stream sweeps up from Baja, Calif., picking up more moisture en route before dumping it in the form of rain on the Chicago area.
While most of the area was troubled by floods, west suburban North Riverside was hit by a powerful windstorm Monday that tore a gaping 45 by 20- foot hole in a K mart store, injuring 10 people inside. Two of the 10 were admitted to hospitals.
The powerful winds that struck the K mart at 2200 S. Harlem Ave., in the North Riverside Plaza shopping center, also knocked down a newly built wall at a nearby Ford dealership, briefly trapping two workers under the debris. The wind also damaged a Commonwealth Edison Co. transformer temporarily cutting electric power in the suburb.
There were between 200 and 300 shoppers inside the K mart store when the winds struck about 2:30 p.m., store officials said. Several witnesses outside the store said they saw the funnel-shapped cloud of a tornado approaching just seconds before the store was damaged.
The National Weather Service said it had no official reports of a tornado in the area, but a spokesman said they received unofficial reports of wind gusts of 50 to 60 miles an hour in suburban Naperville and other unofficial reports of strong winds in Kankakee County.
Near Downers Grove, 37 children and 9 adults suffered minor injuries Monday when a bus in which they were riding was hit by a car that went out of control on rain-slick Int. Hwy. 55. The youngsters, pupils at the Akiba-Schechter Jewish Day School, 5200 S. Hyde Park Blvd., were on their way home from a field trip.
Almost all of the rain that has fallen in the Chicago area this month has come after Sept. 10.
In Chicago it has rained on 14 of the last 20 days.
For example, the Metropolitan Sanitary District`s North Side plant in Skokie measured rainfall every day between Sept. 22 and Sept. 29.
During the eight-day period through Monday the district`s North Side station measured 4.41 inches of rain.
Sanitary district officals said the rain had raised the level of Lake Michigan by as much as a foot Sunday and 6 to 8 inches on Monday. The Chicago River, which is not near flood stage, was 1.4 feet above normal depth Monday afternoon, district officials said.
In Lake County, Charles Jones, director of the Illinois Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, said 1,300 children are unable to attend schools damaged by floods.
Jones also estimated that 300 houses in Lake County have been damaged since the rains began.
Of those, 100 are in the Libertysville Estates subdivision and 75 are in Gurnee, a community of about 7,000 west of Waukegan. In Gurnee, 17 businesses and 3 schools also have been closed by flooding.