Reinforcing our resolve for flood control
Subdivisions covered with water. House-to-house evacuations by boat. Shelters full of displaced people on cots. Foolhardy challenges of nature's wrath, and incredible acts of heroism.
It's not the battered Gulf shore - it's a compilation of scenes from the suburbs when a late-summer storm coupled with Ike's aftermath dumped more than 10 inches of rain locally over the weekend.
Sadly, while this deluge was record-breaking and the flooding extreme, images of desperate sandbagging and rivers over their banks are nothing new. The Flood of September 2008 follows a pattern of similar events in the suburbs over the past several years that seem to make the term "100-year flood" obsolete.
In June, residents along the Chain O' Lakes held their breath as an unstable dam in Wisconsin threatened to dump a 470-acre lake into the Fox River. The dam held, but the Chain spent three weeks above flood stage and water damaged hundreds of suburban homes.
Some of those residents had barely finished repairs from August 2007, when the Fox River poured into houses from Antioch to St. Charles after torrential rains.
Unfortunately for those who now face the long, dirty, frustrating slog of making their homes liveable, we should expect this to happen again in our lifetimes - and if recent history is any guide, many times in our lifetimes.
The suburbs have not been asleep on flood control. Many have made substantial strides in recent decades. But as recent days so dishearteningly showed, it's not enough.
This round of flooding must strengthen our resolve to lobby for all that can be done to rein in unbridled growth in flood plains, establish natural areas along flood-prone stretches of water and move ahead on reservoir and levee projects.
Costly local flood-control efforts are a hard sell in such tough economic and political times, but our vivid memories of this week can help make them a priority. We might never build a system that can protect every home against a one-day 10-inch rainfall, but we can keep flood damage from being an annual event.
It goes without saying that Gov. Blagojevich and the Illinois legislature absolutely must act on a bill to update and maintain our infrastructure - including the bridges that withstood the full force of the raging rivers this weekend and the dams and levees that held back a greater deluge.
To fail on this count, in the face of recent events, would be irresponsible.
We must not forget that this flood's sorrows include the loss of life. Alan Byrd of Rolling Meadows, a father of two, drowned while swimming in a flooded soccer field in Arlington Heights.
This flood also includes heroes, like Orlando Mazzulla and an unidentified man who dove into the wild Des Plaines River to save a teenage boy, or an unnamed man who jumped into a flooded lake at Armstrong Park in Carol Stream to help save another teen.
In ways like these, adversity shows us what we're made of. But now that we know, we hope we can wait a while before being tested again.