Chicago fortunate when it comes to coping with wrath of God-type acts

Those of us paying attention to weather reports in recent weeks have noticed the hurricanes that wrecked their wrath on Texas and now are taking aim on much of Florida. Those with a broader vision will see that those hurricanes also hit Cuba and Puerto Rico, along with the earthquake that has killed dozens in Mexico.

Many a Chicago schoolchild has seen this diorama depiction at the Chicago History Museum of the greatest disaster to impact our city -- the Great Fire of 1871. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

All of which makes me feel fortunate these days to be in Chicago.

A LAND WHERE we don’t get hurricanes and the possibility of being impacted by an earthquake would be a geological anomaly of historic proportions.

We in the Midwest, of course, always face the possibility of tornadoes causing death and destruction. Yet we in Chicago have only 13 tornadoes known to touchdown within the city limits during its not-quite-two-century history.

And only one of those, back on May 6, 1876, hit the area now considered our city’s downtown. Two died and 35 were injured in that incident that damaged the then-Cook County Hospital, along with the Palmer House Hotel.

Coming just five years after the incident that, to this date, is the most significant disaster to impact Chicago – the Great Fire of 1871 – maybe it seemed at that point in time that Chicago was a doomed site.

ONE COULD ARGUE, of course, that the Fire shouldn’t be counted. Is it really a disaster the equivalent of Mother Nature having a hissy fit to have much of the city destroyed by a fire caused by (depending on which account you want to believe) that damned cow kicking over a lamp or some guy named “Peg Leg.”

Besides, we’ve managed to go another 140 years without significant devastation to our city.

We haven’t had a significant tornado touchdown in Chicago since 1967, and that one did most of its damage (33 dead, more than 500 injured) in suburban Oak Lawn – with some damage managing to cross over into the Southwest Side near Midway Airport.

Maybe it's a sign of how fortunate Chicago has been to be spared natural disasters that we can name a shopping center for one of the few structures NOT damaged in the Great Fire

And no, I’m not trying to downplay the tornado that whacked suburban Plainfield back in 1990. That is one of the few disaster-type incidents that I had a hand in covering as a reporter-type person.

BUT THAT ONE lies on the fringe of what could be called the Chicago-area. My point being that we in the city truly have been fortunate. One of the screwiest-type “flood” incidents we had was in 1992 when the Chicago River sprung a leak into the sub-basements that exist beneath downtown buildings.

That one can’t be blamed on nature – that one was pure man-made technical error. Or carelessness, if you prefer to think of it that way.

My point is that in watching these news reports of recent days, I can’t help but feel fortunate about where I live. It’s almost as though I was fortunate enough to be born and raised in one of the safest places in existence – something to keep in mind the next time some political crackpot wants to go off on a rage about the homicide rate of Chicago and exaggerate it into us being the deadliest place on the planet.

It makes me wonder about actress Jennifer Lawrence, who recently made comments about “Mother Nature’s Rage and Wrath” against the people who backed Donald J. Trump for president and who question the legitimacy of “global warming.”

WHICH IS A blatantly absurd thought to have. Although my understanding of the context was that she was trying to mock the individuals who go around thinking of natural disasters as “God’s punishment” against society for tolerating homosexuality.

That is a blatantly ignorant thing to say or think, and is a thought worthy of being mocked.

So what does it say that Mother Nature doesn’t seem to get all that upset about Chicago? Does she love that we don’t try to fool her that often?

Because we all (or at least those of us old enough to remember) know that it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature – even if it’s by passing off Chiffon margarine as real butter!

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I'm homeless! (Eh not really)

I realize my predicament due to the heavy storms that struck the Chicago area and much of the Midwestern U.S. is far from the most severe being experienced.

I had a miserable drive home Tuesday night due to the storms

The storms caused two known fatalities, including one in Ottawa when high winds blew down a tree that landed on top of them, causing a fatality.

THERE ALSO WAS the convalescent center in Ottawa where people suffered injuries, and Gov. Bruce Rauner included a visit to the center during his Wednesday rounds across the state. He also met with officials in Naplate, in addition to receiving a briefing from law enforcement officials in Ottawa.

By comparison, my predicament experienced in the portion of Cook County just south of Chicago was minor. But still a major harassment that I'm still coping with as I write this commentary. Once I finish up, I return to duty with a mop, cleaning up the sloppy floodwater tainted by sewage that managed to creep its way into the basement of the house where I'm currently living.

Which hits me directly because that basement is what passes for my humble abode. The couch that usually passes for my bed is currently cluttered with my belongings, which I managed to elevate to a high-enough space just in time to avoid having my possessions -- which consist mostly of my clothes and a few books -- become completely water-soaked.

But there was a point when the streets outside of the house were flooded over, and the use of a shop vacuum to suck up all the flood water wasn't able to keep up with the fact that the sewers were overflowed to the point where it seems our efforts weren't sufficient.

JUST AS SOON as we'd manage to get a few buckets of water out of the house, there would be a few more inches of water back inside. It was the "mess" that wouldn't leave! Was I doomed to live in floodwater forever?!?

The sum of my life's possessions ...

Now I was fortunate. I had a pair of nephews, both of whom are sufficiently younger and in better physical shape than I am, on hand to help with bucket detail.

I also had my father on hand to operate the "shop vac" to try to suck up the dirty water. Although I have to confess that at his age, I did feel guilty getting him dragged into the clean up efforts.

Which in reality were mostly handled by Mother Nature, who at times can truly be a wacky broad! Or perhaps I should apologize for that remark before she decides to whack me up again with another type of natural disaster.

AFTER REALIZING AROUND 1 a.m. that we were getting nowhere with water removal and that we could easily wind up staying awake all night (on a night when I actually had been hoping to go to sleep early because I was feeling a little bit sluggish), I finally tried to get a few hours of sleep.

... are now idle piles on the couch

Not that I was able to, since I wound up having to sleep on a different couch that was really meant to look cute in a living room with a "proper" decor. But when I woke up a few hours later, I found that most of the water had naturally flowed out of the basement.

The four or so inches of water that had my ankles completely covered was gone! The carpeting was damp and there are some traces of dirt that was turned to mud. But now it's a manageable cleanup effort that I'm hoping will be complete by the time you read this (my taking the time to write this was actually during a lull in clean-up activity that also allowed me to consume a cup of coffee before getting back to work).

Although as annoying as this was, I have to confess that the drive "home" I endured earlier Tuesday night was more horrendous.

FOR I HAD some work-related activity that evening in Gary, Ind. Getting into the northwest Indiana city was no problem.

Some of the slop I now clean up!

But leaving? I had to cope with heavy rainfall exacerbated by the fact that strong winds were blowing water around in every direction. I actually saw rain go from right to left, rather than come straight down from the skies.

My visibility traveling along Interstate 80/94 (a.k.a., the Borman Expressway, named for the astronaut, in case you care) was so minimal I'm amazed I made it all the way back into Illinois without crashing into one of the big-rig trucks that were transporting goods along the highway. It must have been on pure instinct that I made it back in one piece.

All I know is that Tuesday night may not have been terribly "newsworthy" (I don't see a gubernatorial appearance anywhere nearby to check on my condition), but it is a night I doubt I (or any of my neighbors who also got flooded out) will forget anytime soon, Which is why I wasn't paying any attention last night to the presidential address -- any chance we can figure out a way to blame Donald Trump for the mess?

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EXTRA: Death toll up to 8, recovery efforts will be active for awhile

Between the time I wrote a weather-related commentary and the time you read this, the death toll in Illinois due to Sunday’s severe storms (winds of up to 190 miles per hour, in some places), the death toll climbed to 8 people.

Which is still small, considering how large a swath of Illinois got impacted.

LARGE ENOUGH THAT early Tuesday, Gov. Pat Quinn added added six more counties to the list of those that are now officially state disaster areas. Those include Will County that makes up the far south suburban portion of metro Chicago.

But it doesn’t change the fact that this was primarily a storm that devastated rural Illinois communities, and that we in Chicago ought to feel fortunate that we didn’t get hit harder.

In all as of Tuesday morning, there were 13 counties on the state disaster list – which is a designation that doesn’t mean much in itself. But in order to qualify as a federal disaster area (which is what provides all the outside aid to help rebuild), the state must first make a declaration.

“While the recovery will be long and hard, we will work in the coming days, weeks and months to assist these communities and help the people who live there rebuild their lives,” Quinn said, in a prepared statement.

IT WILL BE just a matter of days (possibly by week’s end when we stop getting bombarded every news cycle with the same images of devastation from places like Washington (which seems to be the favorite for TV news crews, possibly because Peoria isn’t that far away). But places like Gifford, Diamond and New Minden (also downstate Illinois communities) also got whacked pretty hard.

Not that anybody with a civic conscience ought to be headed there. Because the reality is that anybody who thinks they can help out with the relief effort would really be doing nothing more than getting in the way of the cleanup crews. People who think they can seriously help ought to contact the Red Cross, or Washington city government at (309) 563-4035 to let the locals know of their availability.

They should be aware of the reality that while the news coverage will soon move on, the need for relief will be ongoing for months as people try to rebuild the lives for themselves that they suddenly lost in a few seconds on Sunday.

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We should feel fortunate we were spared brunt of Sunday's storms!

“Washington” is in the national news these days – as in the downstate community where the locals think Peoria is the nearby big city.

The harsh storms that cut their way through Illinois and spread into the Chicago area on Sunday seem to have done the most damage in central Illinois. Those of us urbanites got to watch television footage Monday morning of destruction throughout the rural community, and some of it bore a strong resemblance to the wreckage of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

THERE DOESN’T SEEM to be much of a death toll. But there are now many families who are now homeless – and there’s a chance that at least a few of them will never fully recover from their losses.

“Nov. 17, 2013” will go down as a historic date in that community’s story, and we’ll have to see in coming months how well Washington, Ill., manages to rebuild itself.

I bring this up because I wonder how many people here got hit with some heavy rain and strong winds and are now going to go on and on and on about how badly they were hit by Sunday’s storms. There’s going to be a lot of “trauma talk” from people who are going to want to compare their “losses” to what other people suffered from.

We were fortunate.

THE ONLY CHICAGO-located color of any significance related to Sunday’s storms was that the brunt of it hit the city proper right around the time that the Chicago Bears were preparing to play the Baltimore Ravens.

Fans had to take cover under the stands at Soldier Field, and the game itself was delayed a couple of hours. Soggy and shuddering fans got a few stories tell that they will remember much longer than the 23-20 final score – or even the fact that the Bears, themselves, won!

But it would have taken a direct tornado touchdown (as opposed to a football one) on the playing surface itself (sending those upper decks flying off into Lake Michigan, or maybe crashing into the Willis Tower) for THAT to have been more significant than the destruction in rural Illinois.

The Chicago Tribune on Monday reported a death toll of six people across the state, with some 21 tornado touchdowns across the state.

NOT TO DETRACT too much from the people who suffered serious loss. But we should consider that most of us were very fortunate, and that we live in a place where the major devastation (the fire of 1871) occurred nearly a century-and-a-half ago.

In my own case, I was in suburban Tinley Park with my brother around mid-day, which was the point in time when the brunt of the storm soared over my head.

That isn’t too far (just one community over) from the tornado touchdown in suburban Frankfort. And I have to confess that for about 10 minutes, the sky got uglier than usual and I had to wonder if something could possibly happen outside.

Yet, the storm managed to pass over me, and within a half hour there was light again in the sky and the only evidence that anything had occurred were the leaves and branches that were blown about the street – making more of a mess than usual!

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT Sunday center around how fortunate I was NOT to have to suffer. It is a feeling we all ought to be thinking these days, even while Gov. Pat Quinn spent his Monday touring assorted sites that WERE hit by the storms.

That, and doing our part to use a rake to clean up the mess on our property.

Because just leaving it there and counting on some future storm to wash the debris away? That’s even lazier than those people whose houses already have their Christmas holiday decorations up because they never bothered to take them down last year!

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Perhaps that’s what they get for living in the most isolated parts of Illinois

The Harrisburg, Ill. tornado of 2012 wasn't severe enough to be a federal disaster.

It may sound so cold to think such a thought. But that seems to be the reality in Harrisburg, a Southern Illinois town of just over 9,200 people.

When a string of tornadoes managed to whisk their way through Missouri and on into Kentucky, Harrisburg was one of the Illinois communities that managed to get hit on Leap Day (a.k.a., Feb. 29).

BECAUSE THERE WASN’T much there to begin with, it didn’t take much for the entire town to be devastated. Plus the fact that everything that happens locally always seems more severe than a major tragedy taking place elsewhere, and you can appreciate how Harrisburg sees their storm of a couple of weeks ago as a major historic event.

They’d like to have the sad saga of tragedy; followed up by the heroic comeback as the people don’t let Mother Nature get them down. They rebuild, possibly to something even more significant than what was there to begin with.

That literally is the tale of Chicago – which could easily have ceased to exist after the great fire of 1871. Instead, it leaped far ahead of other Midwestern towns to become a major world city.

But nothing like that is going to happen in Harrisburg, or surrounding Saline County, Ill. Because in addition to getting walloped by nature, it seems the federal government did a number that will likely keep this town forevermore in the dumps.

BECAUSE IF THEY do choose to rebuild, it’s going to have to be a purely local effort. They’re not about to get much in the way of help from anyone.

Federal officials have ruled that the natural disaster that occurred in Harrisburg wasn’t severe enough to qualify for federal disaster status. There won’t be any federal aid headed for the Southern Illinois community.

A letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to state government said they believe Illinois government is more than capable of providing the finances to help the people of Harrisburg.

“The damage was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments and voluntary agencies,” FEMA officials informed Illinois government.

WHICH MAY BE true on a certain level. There is only so much money to go around, and I’m sure the people of Branson, Mo., will feel relieved that every dollar not being spent in Harrisburg means potentially another dollar that can be spent on rebuilding their community with all those theaters that attract the country music crowd (although for what it’s worth, I have an uncle who lives not far from Branson who claims it’s actually a nice place to visit for a quick show).

But back to Harrisburg, which has been told that even though they had fatalities and there are people who will be left homeless without some assistance to rebuild their residential structures, their suffering just isn’t important enough.

Even though I realize there’s only so much federal money to go around and the devastation may well be worse in Henryville, Ind., or West Liberty, Ky., I’m sure that doesn’t ease the pain of those who suffered within our own state’s boundaries. It certainly didn't make Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., any less disgusted (which was the image I woke up to Monday morning when my television went on to CNN's Headline News and anchor Robin Meade was having her way with the story).

Just like Allstate?

I’m sure we’d be equally ticked off if, somehow, a tornado had managed to clip its way through the extensive suburban area – only to find that someone in Washington thought that Chicago officials were wealthy enough to pay for repairs themselves.

IT’S PART OF why we have a federal government to provide these services. Their actions these days reek of the same stench that we sense whenever an insurance company prefers to look for excuses not to pay a claim – rather than providing the services they’re supposed to for all the years of payments the clients made so they’d be protected on that “rainy day.”

The United States of America, behaving like a face-less insurance company – that is a sad moment for all of us, regardless of where we live.

  -30-

I feel fortunate to have (thus far) avoided tornadoes and other natural disasters

Even before I read the news reports this weekend, I knew that there would be something resembling disaster very near to us. I just didn’t know which Illinois towns would make the datelines.

It turned out to be Streator and Dwight, as serious tornadoes that cut through the Midwestern United States caused severe damage in multiple states besides Illinois.

WHAT GAVE ME my inkling was having the television on late Saturday. I was listening to it more than watching it, but the nasty buzz of the Emergency Broadcast System is not something that can be ignored.

Which is why I happened to hear the warnings with their computer-generated mechanized voice telling literally where tornadoes were being seen, and warning people in those communities to take shelter immediately.

At the particular moment that caught my attention, the tornadoes were headed east near Chebanse, a town on the Will/Kankakee county line right on Interstate 57. My gut reaction upon hearing this was to think, “it’s skipping Chicago.”

Because that point is literally what many people would consider to be the boundary between the Chicago metropolitan area and the rest of Illinois (although I am aware that Kankakee residents to the south are a part of the Chicago broadcast market).

WHICH MEANS THAT by thinking it was skipping by Chicago, I literally breathed a sigh of relief. That doesn’t mean I’m glad we didn’t suffer while people in Dwight did. It means that am fully aware of the fact that I realize a tornado is the great equalizer of the Midwest.

A powerful enough funnel cloud can devastate miles-long stretches of rural land, or take down a city block. It plays no favorites.

As much as some people like to tell tacky jokes about tornadoes that involve mobile home communities, I have always wondered how severe the wreckage and fatalities would be if a funnel cloud were to touch down at the northeast corner of Wacker Drive and Jackson Boulevard (otherwise known as the Willis Tower).

It doesn’t even have to be the tallest bulding in Chicago. Anywhere in “the Loop” would be bad. Depending on what time it would strike, the potential for carnage is significant.

FOR THE RECORD, modern-day downtown Chicago (as in the past century) has never had a tornado touchdown. The last recorded one in the area now considered downtown was on May 6, 1876, with 11 other tornado “touchdowns” taking place since 1870 within what we now regard as the city limits.

Which makes me wonder if we’re overdue. I know, you’d rather I focus on whether the Chicago Blackhawks can win the Stanley Cup Wednesday, or if they’re going to drag this out until week’s end. Somehow, I think those people on the fringes of Chicago now have something much more real to worry about than pro hockey.

It also does not help that I still remember being a reporter-type person writing copy for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago on Aug. 28, 1990 when a tornado with winds exceeding 261 miles per hour struck suburban Plainfield.

It remains the most powerful tornado to ever hit the Chicago area, although the people who live in that Will County community still remember it as the moment when 29 people were suddenly killed – and another 350 injured.

I STILL REMEMBER the wreckage and rubble that suddenly erupted, comparable to what cut across the border between metro Chicago and central Illinois.

It remains to be seen how quickly those communities will be able to rebuild. It may even wind up becoming a positive story in watching how this weekend’s tornado victims are able to rebuild their lives after losing everything (while being thankful for whichever friends and relatives survived uninjured).

But I also will admit there is a difference between my seeing this kind of wreckage firsthand, and actually experiencing it – which is something I have not yet done in my life (and would not mind if I somehow managed to miss out on that experience).

The closest I can recall is back when I was 12 and saw funnel clouds developing in the skies above where I lived then in suburban Lansing. I still recall the feeling of dread while sitting in the basement, wondering at what moment the “destruction” would hit.

I WAS LUCKY. The funnel clouds I saw didn’t touch down anywhere close to where I lived then. I had a fortunate feeling that disaster had somehow skipped by me.

Similar to how I felt late Saturday when I was at the far southern end of Cook County near the Cook/Will border – hearing emergency warnings telling me that just one county away, potential existed for people to suffer.

That is too close for my comfort.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: From the serious to the overly dramatic, this pair of videos help remind us of that day nearly 20 years ago when the Chicago area was hit with its most powerful tornado ever.