Click here for a slideshow of the flood of 2007
When the Des Plaines River crested Saturday morning at 7.71 feet, residents in Riverside along West Avenue and Maplewood Avenue breathed a sigh of relief. Although the river had overflowed its banks by nearly a foot, the flood waters never reached the doors of homeowners, some of whom spent part of last Friday filling up sandbags just in case.
Meanwhile, electric lights in Brookfield, Riverside and North Riverside that had been dark since Thursday evening, began flickering to life beginning Saturday morning in most areas. A handful of ComEd customers in Riverside’s First Division who were without power through the weekend, had power restored during the overnight hours of Aug. 26-27.
By Monday morning in Riverside Lawn, parts of which were submerged in flood waters, power was restored to most if not all customers. Gas-powered generators, which could be heard throughout Riverside Lawn, an unincorporated area of Cook County between the river and 39th Street just south of Riverside, were silent Monday morning.
According to George Welter, external affairs manager for ComEd, some 641 ComEd customers in Riverside and another 1,700 in Brookfield were without power after fierce thunderstorms dumped over 3.5 inches of rain last week. Most of the rain came in two waves of storms Thursday afternoon and during the overnight hours of Aug. 23-24.
The Illinois State Climatologist Office issued a release on Aug. 24 stating that this August was the wettest on record for northeastern Illinois. Through Aug. 27, the area received 11.42 inches of rain, topping the 1987 record of 11.02 inches.
North Riverside Village Administrator Guy Belmonte said that power had been restored to almost all of that village by Friday, expect for a small pocket of homes on the south end of the village near 31st Street and Desplaines Avenue.
While the flood waters loomed as the more potent threat, the power outages were the most frustrating element in the wake of the powerful storms. Many of those who lost power were without any electricity for 48 hours or more.
Rosie Curiel, a resident of Gladstone Avenue in Riverside Lawn whose house was not flooded by the river water, was nonetheless without power on Friday. While many of her neighbors ran generators, Curiel, whose family is new to the area, was without a generator. Without a way to pump water from her well, toilets couldn’t flush. She resorted to collecting water, which was knee deep in some places in Riverside Lawn, in buckets to solve that problem.
“I came here in February,” said Curiel, who lives in a home with her cousin and two children. “We weren’t expecting that.”
Eunice Budzinski, a senior citizen who lives in the 3000 block of Harlem Avenue in Riverside, said on Saturday morning that her building had been without power since 7:45 p.m. on Thursday. She stayed at a Lyons motel on Friday night, because she needed electricity to power a medical device she’s required to use.
Some areas of Chicago were also buffeted by winds that reached 80 mph and more, uprooting trees and causing extensive damage. Riverside, Brookfield and North Riverside were largely spared the high winds, although many smaller tree limbs could be found scattered throughout the villages.
Brookfield Fire Chief Patrick Lenzi said that his department responded to 10 storm-related calls on Thursday. Power wires came down on top a chain link fence that separated the Brookfield Zoo property from residences in the 8700 block of Rockefeller Avenue.
Downed wires on top of a coach house and a garage in the 3200 block of Harrison Avenue forced the evacuation of the coach house’s resident while emergency crews secured the area.
Riverside Assistant Fire Chief John Buckley said that his village’s firefighters responded to three or four reports of downed wires and just a handful of residents called the department seeking sand and bags to barricade against the rising waters.
The department also responded to a handful of calls regarding flooded basements. In those cases, power outages caused sump pumps to fail, said Buckley.
“Obviously, we’re relieved we didn’t get the amount of water they were talking about in the predictions,” Buckley said. “If we had gotten the rain on Friday that they were predicting, it could have changed what happened.”
Early Friday morning, with strong storms predicted for later that day, the National Weather Service predicted that the Des Plaines River at Riverside would crest at 9.8 feet. The worst flooding on record for Riverside happened on Aug. 15, 1987, when the river crested at 9.9 feet, according to the National Weather Service.
“There’s a lot of difference between 7.7 feet and 9.8 feet,” Buckley said.
On Friday afternoon, the Riverside Police Department imposed parking restrictions on streets near the river and set up a temporary parking facility for those residents’ vehicles in the parking lot behind Hauser Junior High School. As waters began to slowly recede, police lifted the restrictions by noon on Saturday.
