This much is certain: In the past two days, we haven’t suffered anything that even remotely resembles what the residents of Galveston Island and Houston, TX have been suffering from, in terms of mother nature’s wrath. Our hearts and prayers (and hopefully donations) go out to them.
But, in our parts, some of us in the Chicagoland area did have to deal with the aftermath of hurricane Ike’s remnants, as well. Even before Ike came to visit us on its long and destructive journey from the warm waters off the Atlantic Ocean, we were inundated by heavy downpours on Friday night. Now, we Chicagoans are a resilient and weather-hardened bunch (just watch us deal with snow and ice in the winter). But water seepage/flooding in our basements after a heavy rainstorm is a whole different story. In our house in Edgebrook, we haven’t had any water issues at all, ever since we moved here in 2002. Credit for this fully goes to my regularly inspected and maintained flood control system (yeah baby). But some neighbors haven’t been as lucky. Neither was one of my family members whom I helped with his recovery efforts to “dehydrate” his bi-level residence in Park Ridge, this past weekend. You know, I have sold split-level homes in the past, but as of today, I can proudly proclaim that I am intimately familiar with the crawl space structure of a split-level home. I removed 53 flooded plastic bins and pumped about a foot of water/sewage, over an area of roughly 600 square feet, on Saturday. If you own a split-level home, please take this advice from me: Do not use your crawl space for storage, at least not for items that you deeply care about. In all likelihood, it will flood again, it’s just a matter of time, unless your house is protected by a flood control system, like mine.
Driving around in Edgebrook and Sauganash today, I was pleasantly surprised to notice the absence of street closures/barricades, signaling flooding of streets or viaducts. Sure, the effects of Chicago’s rainblocker system could occasionally be witnessed, here or there (slowly draining storm sewers into the main sewer). But for the most part, Sauganash and Edgebrook weren’t as hardly hit as some of the neighborhoods running adjacent to the North Branch of the Chicago river. I didn’t drive through South Edgebrook or Indian Woods though, where the situation could be different, as these neighborhoods are a bit closer to the river.
What were your “water” stories from this past weekend? Send me some pictures, or videos. I’ll publish them here on 60646 Blog, with your permission.

Addendum: If you want to see what the flooding caused in and around the North Park area over the weekend, head on over to “Swedish Colombian’s” Flickr page.

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