The $10,000 repair that went out to bid

On the morning of 13 April 1992, people in Chicago's Loop were told their basements were flooding. It was not raining. An Army Corps of Engineers officer who was told the news looked out of the window and said as much: "Flooding? In the Loop? Carol, It's not even raining out there!"

The water came from the Chicago River into the freight-tunnel system beneath downtown. The Corps' later account links the damage near Kinzie Street Bridge to pile-driving work. The chief bridge inspector's memo, reproduced by UPI, attributed the wall failure to added lateral soil pressure from new piles installed close to the tunnel. That was his reported assessment, not a claim that the piles had struck the tunnel roof. [1,2]

What I find hard to put down is UPI's account of a memo dated 2 April, eleven days before the flood. The details that follow are from the memo text reproduced in that report, rather than an original memo I have inspected. The city's chief bridge inspector, Louis Koncza, wrote to the acting transportation secretary. A section of tunnel wall about 20 feet long and 6 feet high had been damaged. Soil from under the river was flowing in. He tied it to the new pile clusters installed in September 1991, and he warned that it could flood out the entire freight tunnel system. He proposed brick bulkheads, which had been built in the same tunnels many times before. Cost, about $10,000. Time, about two weeks. "With your approval, work will begin as soon as possible."

UPI reported that the job was put out to bid instead. Two bids were rejected. More site visits could not be scheduled before the tunnel gave way. The mayor asked for the acting secretary's resignation the day after the flood, and got it.

I am interested in how the repair decision was handled. The memo is specific about the damage, the proposed work and the consequences of waiting. The news report records the bid process that followed. It does not supply a complete account of the decision-makers' reasoning.

I cannot establish from those records that nobody weighed the risk of delay. What they show is that an urgent repair proposal went through a bid process and the tunnel failed before further site visits could be arranged. From the decision record, I would want to know how the flooding warning was assessed and why the proposed repair was refused; I would also want to know what protected the tunnel in the meantime.

I would not read a place in the approval queue as the risk being under control. A repair can wait in that queue while the condition it is meant to fix gets worse. That possibility needs an owner and a review time.

My questions would be what could happen before the next decision and what evidence supports that timescale. A dated inspection report hands the reviewer something to check. How urgent the work is has to be weighed against the condition and the consequences.

For an urgent repair, I would want a recorded route to an authorised decision before the risk becomes unacceptable. That includes recording the risks of waiting as well as the reasons for spending.