Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: LETTER FROM A SNAKEBIT CITY; Chicago Is Up to Its Shoulders in Civic Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 07:35:20 EST Message-ID: <8.1992Nov21.073520@AmeriCast.com> LETTER FROM A SNAKEBIT CITY; Chicago Is Up to Its Shoulders in Civic Disasters What happens when Calamity Jane starts to cry on "The City of Big Shoulders?" Chicago, which also prides itself on being "The City That Works," has been seriously accident-prone for at least six months, besieged by a massive downtown flood, freak accidents and clogged commuter arteries. About the only plague missing has been locusts, the threat of which has been diminished greatly by cold temperatures and the onset of winter. In April, the city's most bizarre disaster since the the Great Fire of 1871 caused millions of gallons of Chicago River water to pour into downtown basements after construction workers repairing a bridge pierced an old, subterranean freight tunnel. The flood forced evacuation of about 200,000 people and shut down the Chi- cago Board of Trade for two days and dozens of other businesses for as long as a week. Blame for that disaster seems most likely be decided in court. Officials of the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. said that the city never told its workers about the tunnel and that the company would not have agreed to install protective bridge pilings had it known about the tunnel. The city maintains that the construction company was responsible for investigating the work area. Stay tuned. Two months after the flood, which began near the Kinzie Street Bridge, disaster struck a familiar construction site, the Michi- gan Avenue Bridge. That spans the Chicago River and connects Michigan Avenue's fashionable "Magnificent Mile" with the Loop, the main downtown business area. In its second year of major repairs, the bridge was open to single-lane traffic in each direction when a car hit a slick spot and a taxi behind it spun out, striking four pedestrians. Two of the victims tumbled over the railing and into the Chicago River. Another was caught by a good Samaritan who grabbed her hands as she dangled over the edge, and the fourth lay on the bridge. Luckily, the construction company had been keeping one worker po- sitioned in a motorboat under the bridge lest an ironworker suffer a similar fate. After months of sitting in his boat with little to do and no one to rescue, construction worker Joe Weber had a banner day. The accident and heroics, of course, did little to improve the lives of motorists caught in the ensuing traffic jams. Disaster next struck on a rare Indian summer day in September when a span on the other side of the same drawbridge suddenly snapped open under the weight of a 40-ton construction crane that caused it to become unseated at its pivot point. Not until last week did engineers solve the predicament and lower the 1,900-ton slab. Andrew Wright, an editor of Engineering News Record, told the Chicago Tribune that fixing the bridge was a "gee-whiz sort of thing . . . . I think you could accurately call the circumstances extraordinary." The person who owned a Ford Escort illegally parked next to the bridge also discovered some extraordinary circumstances. When the bridge span snapped, the wrecking ball attached to the crane had walloped the car and nestled in the passenger seat. The jinx doesn't seen finished quite yet. Recently, a construction ac- cident on rail lines halted Amtrak and commuter trains for a day. Construction mishaps seem to be a regular codicil in the Chicago edition of Murphy's Law. Three years ago, the city and state governments spent nearly $2 million dollars on a pedestrian tun- nel designed to connect City Hall with the State of Illinois Building across the street. Instead of finding light at the end of their tunnels, workers discovered that the two sections missed aligning by almost a foot. The mistake cost taxpayers $240,000 to correct. Fortunately for Mayor Richard M. Daley, public outrage about the chaos has been mixed with a healthy dose of bewilderment and even awe about when the next shoe, or bridge, may drop. However, it would behoove the mayor to remember that Chicagoans do have a breaking point when things don't work. Former mayor Michael Bilandic, who succeeded Daley's father, Richard J., was practically drop-kicked out of office after the last big weather-related trauma, the blizzard of 1979. The disas- ter wasn't the snow but Bilandic. He waited too long to have the streets plowed.<02:06 11-21C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)