When Lauriano Roman got a call from his tenant last Friday about flooding in the basement of their Gage Park home, he didn’t expect the damage to be severe.
But the storms that swept through the city left more than 16 inches of water in the basement of their home in the 5600 block of South Maplewood Avenue. The water didn’t pour in from outside — it surged up through the basement drains, Roman said.
“It was like a fountain,” said Roman. “It wasn’t even raining that bad for it to cause flooding like that. It wasn’t the rain that caused this, it was the city.”
A week later, Roman has gotten the water out of the basement, but he still needs to replace the drywall and doors. Hundreds of other Southwest Side residents, like Roman, are dealing with the aftermath of flooded basements and garages, and local officials are pushing for hearings and answers about what went wrong and what can be done to prevent future flooding that also damaged the Gage Park library.
The damage from last week’s storms extended beyond city limits. U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, D-Ill., said in statement that more than 2,000 flood reports had been filed from his constitutes in the city and suburbs.
Roman said it felt like the entire neighborhood was underwater July 25. Streets and sidewalks were so flooded that he had to turn around and swap his car for a pickup truck just to reach the house.
“I don’t scare easily, but when I was driving through that neighborhood? I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), who represents about half of Gage Park, described the flooding as “horrendous” with some residents dealing with more than 2 feet of water.
The roof of the storefront Gage Park Library “started leaking,” he said. Gage Park alleys were “literally wall-to-wall garbage” because many residents lost everything in their furnished basements after being “completely caught off guard,” Lopez said.
Although torrential rains were ultimately to blame, Lopez accused the city’s Department of Water Management of exacerbating the flooding problem by failing to do the routine maintenance needed to “get water where it needs to be.”
“We were not being proactive in cleaning the catch basins,” he said. “I’ve seen where this department, following in the footsteps of the Bureau of Forestry, was closing out sewer and catch basin cleanings without actually doing the work just so they could reduce their wait time for services.”
Many of the new projects on the Southwest Side are also equipped with “restrictors,” which Lopez described as “plastic balls in the sewer that are designed to help keep water from overwhelming the system and making its way out to the McCook Reservoir.”
“Those two things in particular — along with the fact that we had 7 inches of rain drop in less than two hours — caused … the perfect storm. It created a situation where there was just so much water not going to where it needed to go that the water found a place in peoples’ basements as the path of least resistance,” the alderperson said.
Lopez noted that the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District issued a statement a few days ago claiming that the McCook Reservoir that’s supposed to service communities like Gage Park, Clearing, Garfield Ridge and others was “only 60 percent full.” Lopez said that reservoir could have filled if the water had gotten through the city’s system to that location.
“Instead, it stayed in the neighborhood, stayed on the street and stayed in peoples’ basements,” Lopez said. “We need to have hearings with the Department of Water … to determine what exactly went wrong. How did we fail? How do we keep failing? Austin experienced the same problem two years ago, and we’ve had no plan on how to protect communities and no action by the Water Department of this administration.”
The city’s Department of Water Management and the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.
Roman said that last Friday, all he could think about was damage control. Since then, he’s been focused on repairs. The flooding ruined the home’s HVAC system and boiler — replacements that have already cost him more than $1,700.
“I can’t do anything about the damages to my tenant’s property, but I’m doing what I can to make the basement livable again.” he said.
Ald. Jeylu Gutierrez (14th), who represents the other half of Gage Park, said she’s gotten more than 400 calls from constituents about flooded basements, garages and backyards.
She expects the number of complaints to surge now that the city has asked flood victims to use a QR code to access a survey about flood damage.
“People lost a lot of stuff in their basements,” she said. “People who were living in basements — they have to move away from those properties. The need is big. It impacted a lot of families in Gage Park and the Chicago Lawn area.”
Roman said he submitted the survey, but he wasn’t hopeful the city would reimburse him.
“If the rain had caused this, flooding would have happened all over the city, but it was only on this side of the city,” he said. “It’s not fair that the people who live here have to deal with this.”
At the Gage Park library, one of the city’s oldest storefront libraries, water came through the ceiling and flooding caused it to temporarily close, said Gutierrez, adding that they are pushing for health and building inspectors to make a decision on what should be done.
“For far too long, we’ve known that we need a new space,” she said. “These old libraries — the storefronts — need a lot of renovations and to be updated.”
Unlike Lopez, Gutierrez had only praise for the mayor’s office, Water Management Commissioner Randy Conner’s staff and the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
She said she’s working with García’s congressional office to get the disaster declaration needed to qualify for “reimbursements and funding” to compensate flood victims.