Deniz Sidkey credits his neighbors with saving his life.
He had just returned from grabbing dinner at Jersey Mike’s Monday when he heard a tree snap outside his home in Lansing. Shortly after, the windows in his house shattered and debris began falling into the home as the storm raged outside.
While he was trapped in his “totaled” home in the far south suburb, Sidkey’s wife went to ask neighbors for help. They flocked to Sidkey’s aid, some of them who’d never even met him before.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said Monday evening. “My neighbors came to my rescue. It’s unbelievable, I don’t even know who the one guy is.”
The storms that hit Lansing hard were among two rounds of nasty weather that rolled through the Chicago area Monday afternoon and evening. They downed trees, delayed flights and left more than 300,000 ComEd customers without electricity.
The National Weather Service issued its first alerts around noon Monday, and a tornado warning followed for west and southwest suburban areas. The weather service hadn’t confirmed any tornadoes by Monday night and said it will investigate reports of tornadoes.
In Lansing, the winds were strong enough to rip the roofs off houses and move vehicles around.
Maryann Pozen wasn’t home when storms rattled the area, but she got word that her house had been damaged.
When she arrived back at the place where she has lived for nearly 40 years, the sight was jarring.
“Just trees everywhere, leaves everywhere, no roof on our house, the backyard totally destroyed, our neighbor’s house totally destroyed,” Pozen said. “I just hope that a lot of my pictures are OK. I’m just glad we’re all OK. Just gotta move forward, that’s all we can do.”
Pozen credited her neighbors in Lansing for checking on her and helping however they could. More than a dozen homes in the area sustained damage.
“All our neighbors just came out willing to help,” she said. “That was beautiful, really. People I’ve never really met before were willing to help, which is really nice.”
Tiffany Fliszar-Rivera, who helped Sidkey get out of his home, said she hasn’t seen a storm this bad in the 30 years she’s lived in Lansing but said the way the neighborhood responded is a testament to its resilience and community bond.
“I’ve been here for 30 years for a reason, and I’m proud to live here,” she said. “I’m very happy that everybody came out of the woodwork essentially and started helping each other, getting things together and making sure that people were safe.”
Fliszar-Rivera’s teenage son Colton Fliszar-Tatgenhorst went door to door to check on neighbors, asking whether they needed him to help get people or belongings out of damaged homes.
“I tried to jump in as best I could,” he said. “I’m just so blessed that I didn’t get hurt, but I’m also kind of upset because my neighbors are just in a bad place.”
The storms brought downed trees and flooded streets throughout Chicago and the suburbs, and left more than 315,000 ComEd customers were without power as of Monday evening, according to the company’s outage map. Outages spanned nearly the entire Chicago area, from Zion near the Wisconsin border to Calumet City near the Indiana border, and as far west as Aurora.
The storms caused serious flight delays at Chicago’s airports. Delays were approaching two hours at O’Hare Airport and around 45 minutes at Midway as of 2:30 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. High water covered many area roadways, slowing traffic.
More than 200 flights had been canceled at O’Hare, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. Midway was mostly spared, with only two reported cancellations.
CTA Yellow and Purple lines reported service suspensions due to track debris.
In Orland Park, the there were downed power lines and heavy tree damage.
Guy Marino, whose family has lived in the area nearly 60 years, called the storm “catastrophically worse” than any he’s been through in the area before.
The high winds damaged several large trees on Marino’s property, left some of his belongings, such as bird feeders, strewn elsewhere.
“This is my first one of this magnitude,” Marino said as he drove through Old Creek on his golf cart, surveying the damage. “We’ve never had one hit in this area this bad.”
Previous storms might have known down a tree or two but nothing like this, he said.
After weeks of seeing water levels subside at the two largest reservoirs in the Deep Tunnel flood-prevention system, both began filling up again. The Thornton reservoir rose to more than a third full Monday afternoon after dropping to under 30% full. The McCook reservoir in Bedford Park was two-thirds full Monday evening.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which manages the Deep Tunnel and other flood-prevention mechanisms, urged people to conserve water to relieve sewer systems and prevent flooding.
The storms arrived on a day the Chicago area already was under a heat advisory, with the heat index expected to hit an uncomfortable 100 to 110. As the rains subsided, more moderate air moved in, with the forecast high Tuesday through Friday expected to be in the 80s.
Soaked
Contributing: Brett Chase
