Assessing the damage and hoping

Paul Ruby crossed his fingers Monday and brought in the sandbags that surround the Herrington Inn and Spa.

"Hopefully it wasn't premature," said Ruby, general manager of the Geneva institution. "They're staged and ready to go back in case the front up in Wisconsin affects us."

Across the Tri-Cities and beyond, business owners, government officials and residents took stock of the damage caused by the storms that battered the area late last week.

"We're pretty much back to normal," said Ruby, adding that water didn't make it inside the Herrington.

Campton Township resident Brian Stuhlmacher remains worried about the 4 feet of water in his backyard in the Evening Prairie subdivision, a flood-prone area between Silver Glen and Burlington roads. More than 40 homeowners in the neighborhood are affected by the flooding, Stuhlmacher estimates.

Workers from the Kane County water resources department in March pumped water out of a retention pond that wasn't draining properly during an extremely rainy period earlier this year. But a faulty drain tile remains, causing more water to build up there over the past few days, Stuhlmacher said.

"They put a Band-Aid on the system, but never really replaced the system," Stuhlmacher said.

The Kane County Office of Emergency Management distributed 40,000 sandbags and 250 tons of sand at several locations throughout the county, director Don Bryant said.

Bryant and other local officials are waiting to learn how much state assistance will be available after Gov. Rod Blagojevich's declaration that Kane, Cook, Lake and McHenry counties are state disaster areas. With that proclamation comes state assistance such as equipment and work crews to help with cleanup, but that assistance won't be available until local officials assess the damages and make specific requests, said Patti Thompson, an Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman.

In South Elgin, the Fox River on Monday stood at 14.38 feet above its normal level. That's down slightly since Sunday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Flood stage is 16.1 feet.

"The water's going down," Bryant said. "That's a good thing."