Rain recedes but waters climb and power still out
An estimated 118,000 homes are still without electricity today as crews worked to restore power to the storm-ravaged suburbs.
The bulk of the outages continue to be in the northern suburbs, where 80,000 ComEd customers remain in the dark.
Roughly 23,000 Chicagoans and 15,000 south suburban residents are without electricity, ComEd spokeswoman Judy Rader said.
More than 206 ComEd crews are currently working to restore power, in addition to 176 crews assigned to down trees affecting service. The numbers should swell to about 485 this afternoon, when repair crews from Texas, Philadelphia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Southern Illinois arrive.
The crews are working in 16-hours shifts, Rader said.
"We're still anticipating it's going to be a multi-day restoration effort," she said.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin joined several other elected officials on a tour of flood-ravaged Des Plaines this morning. Standing with his shoes off and pants rolled up in shin-high water, the Illinois senator said he was thankful the storm wrath's focused on property damage instead taking human lives.
"I think a lot of people here are counting their blessings," Durbin said. "This could have been a lot worse."
In Lake County, a swollen Fox River compounded the problem by cresting around 3 a.m. today. Though the river has gone down 3 inches in the past nine hours, a flood wave continues to ripple through the Chain O' Lakes area, officials said.
The lakes are expected to rise as much as a foot and may not start to recede until Monday.
Volunteers spent the morning pumping water out of the deluged Fox River Spring Subdivision in Antioch Township. More than 100 homes in Lake County fell victim to flooding, officials said.
"Most of the sandbags I think really held and protected many of the homes," Amy McEwan, Lake County's assistant administrator. "But there was some damage in low lying areas."
Officials don't yet have a damage assessment.
In downtown Gurnee, Emerald Street and Old Grand Road remained under roughly 6 inches of water. Volunteers, however, have ceased their sandbagging efforts along the Des Plaines River and refocused their efforts toward helping the Chain ‘O Lakes area.
"We did not get the rain that was projected to come last night," McEwan said. "We got less than an inch yesterday and that significantly improved the conditions in that area."
"Over the last 24 hours, we dodged a bullet," said Glenn Westman, wetlands specialist for Lake County Stormwater Management Commission. "We did not receive, especially in the northern part of Lake County and southern Wisconsin, more than a quarter inch of rainfall."
The National Weather Service forecast for Friday had warned of potentially heavy rain with thunderstorms, which did not materialize. The next three to four days are expected to be sunny and dry.
The water level on the Des Plaines River peaked mid-day Friday at about 10.5 feet, 3.5 feet above the flood level of 7 feet, at the Russell Road gauge close to the Wisconsin border.
At Gurnee, the Des Plaines River crested today morning at about 9.74 feet.
"It looks like we came through in better shape than 2004," Westman said. "Downstream (at Libertyville and Lincolnshire) should be pretty well protected with precautions they took over the last few days with sandbagging."
The Des Plaines water level is slowly receding. It may take about a week for the river to return to below flood level at Russell Road, barring any significant rainfall. It may be Thursday before the river returns to below flood level at Gurnee.
The Fox River crested early Saturday at 14.98 feet, nearly 5 feet above flood level of 10 feet. It will be likely two weeks before the Fox River recedes to near flood level.
The water-logged suburbs will receive a bit of respite in coming days as no rain is forecasted again until Wednesday.