Hundreds of residents reported flooding in their homes after record-breaking rainfall levels hit Chicagoland on Tuesday.
Sadie Douglas, 27, who lives on the garden level of a Rogers Park building said the rainfall brought the worst flooding she’s ever experienced in her home. Douglas, a Wrigleyville waitress, has renter insurance — but it doesn’t cover flooding.
“When I didn’t know how much water was going to be coming in here,” she said, “I felt kind of helpless, like I was going to lose everything, and I was going to have to start over somehow. I’m only a server.”
She’s been in the apartment about a year, and already had dealt with flooding — just not this bad. Douglas said she had a “fight or flight” response as water poured through her home and she tried to move all her belongings.
“My couch is by my front door. My dining table is like literally in the middle of the room,” she said. “The kitchen was like a like a mud pie. It was like a swamp.”
O’Hare Airport on Tuesday set a record for April 14 rainfall with 2.43 inches, shattering the previous record for the date set in 1949 when 1.21 inches fell, according the National Weather Service. Tuesday was the rainiest April day at O’Hare since it saw 3.54 inches in 2013.
The Norwood Park area on the city’s Northwest Side accounted for 114 of the more than 600 flooding complaints logged by the city’s 311 service request hotline from midnight Tuesday through late Wednesday morning.
Lorraine Runge, 68, who has lived in Norwood Park for over two decades, said her basement was completely dry at 10 p.m. — but when she went downstairs an hour later, the lower level was flooded with about two inches of water.
“It’s like a big wave comes up, because it happens so fast,” Runge said. “I think everybody got flooded.”
By midday, Benjamin Vance, owner of Rescue Plumbing, had teams helping clean up 15 homes, with 14 homes still on its waiting list.
“We’re totally booked out,” Vance said. “We can’t take any more calls.”
A flood watch that includes areas around the Des Plaines River in Riverside and River Forest will remain in effect through Friday evening.
In Des Plaines, sandbags can be picked up at the Des Plaines Public Works facility, 1111 Joseph Schwab Road, according to a city news release, which also noted remote sandbag filling stations could be set up in areas impacted by flooding as conditions develop.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Mike Bardou said the metro area, all of Northern Illinois and Northwest Indiana are also under a flood watch. The possibility of tornadoes, however, is minimal compared to earlier in the week.
“We’re concerned about maybe some potentially damaging winds, or kind of marginally severe, like quarter type-size hail,” he said. “The threat is not nearly as great as it was yesterday.”
“Know your area,” Bardou said. “If you’re prone to high water or flooding, or your basement tends to flood if it rains very heavily, be mindful. We’re in a stretch where that could very easily happen.”
Flooding has been getting worse in Chicago in recent decades, according to a Sun-Times/WBEZ investigation. Stronger, climate change-fueled thunderstorms are overwhelming the city’s sewers, and rain is falling harder and faster, backing up systems designed to allow water to flow.
