Doomed to Fail - Ep 132 - Swimming in the Sub-Basement: The Great Chicago Flood of 1992

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Today, we go back down below the city of Chicago to talk about the Great Flood (Leak?) of 1992. Did you know that in the 1890s, construction started on a railway under the city that would transport telephone lines, coal, and eventually packages around its 60 miles of track? By the 1950s, the tunnels were shut down and largely forgotten due to better streets, less coal dependence, and some corruption. Until... an unexpected bad thing happened... Grab your galoshes and a flashlight. We're going in! Sources:1992 Loop Flood Brings Chaos, Billions In Losses - https://web.archive.org/web/20070927231222/http://cbs2chicago.com/vault/local_story_104140940.htmlCorps responds to strange flood - https://web.archive.org/web/20080607013746/http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/CEPA/PUBS/may02/story10.htmhttps://www.chicagotribune.com/2017/04/12/great-flood-of-1992/ Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Sweet. We are up and recording. Taylor, hi. How are you? I don't know. This is my radio voice. Should I pretend to be happy? I'm fine. I have not been sick for weeks and weeks

and feel terrible. Just kidding. I'm sorry, I'm going to sniffle a lot probably during this as well. It's okay. It's okay. It's a lot going on for folks.

Taylor's not feeling great, but we're going to muddle our way through it and it's going to be awesome. Yeah. Super excited. Taylor, would you like to introduce us? I would. Thank you.

Hi, everyone. Old friends and new friends. Welcome to Doom to DeFail where the podcast that brings you history is most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week, sometimes, most week. And I'm Taylor, joined by Fars.

It was a nice little callout. So I definitely planned my week poorly and never got around to editing last week's episode or episode that I was covering the topic of. And so, yeah, I'm a little backed up at the moment. So we're going to go back to our regular scheduling. So this week we're just going to release Taylor's episode. And then the episode I did from the week before. So that is how we're going to play catch up. and Taylor's been very patient with my incompetence, I would say.

No, it's fine. Whatever. No, but you all. Thank you. Everything's fine. So you, what, what are you, is this a hint thing or is this not a hint thing? Um, I guess not really. Now I'm doing something really, really silly that I can't want to talk about with you.

Okay. No, I don't know if you're going to guess it, honestly. All right. Because I haven't really heard. I didn't hear about this until I was, it's another Chicago story. I actually have a bigger one I'm going to do next week, but I'm reading a book and I just like was not going to get to finish it. Because like Tuesday I spent the day in bed with one of those ice packs that goes over your eyes to like with puffy eyes. But I put it around my neck and like tied it to my head so it was on my throat.

And then I just like laid in bed like that literally all day. You have a sore throat. Terrible. I don't think it's COVID. I never had a sore throat with COVID. I had a sore throat last time I had COVID, which was like not that long ago also. But I didn't take a COVID test because I don't have any

and like now, who cares, you know? I know, I know. You know what I mean? And it's like, oh, I don't know where the COVID test is. I got to go. It's like, what are you going to do? What is you going to tell you have it or you don't? Right.

And I'm not going to like, whatever. I have all my, I'm updated on my stuff. I don't think it's going to kill me. But, but yeah, I know, I've had terrible to our throat. So I, anyway, so I'm going to get to that one and I'm excited to tell you that story next week. But this week I wanted to do another Chicago story that I heard about last two weeks ago when I was in Chicago for my friend Kirk mentioned this to me. And I was like, oh, I hadn't heard of that before. So we talked about a fire in 1871.

So I'm going to talk about a flood. And guess what year there was a flood in Chicago? Just for fun. 1872. 1992. Um, yes. So I didn't, I guess I was too young. I mean, well, I'm not.

I was not too young because my dad had to leave work early. I'll tell you about it. Well, yeah, but yeah, you, you, you had a direct connection to Chicago, which made me, yeah, yeah, remember it. And also you're much older than I am, so. Well, I don't remember it. That's what I'm saying. I know, it's so funny how much younger than you I look, even though I am so much younger than you. that's a nice nice little comeback so the great chicago flood after on april 13th 1992 um it was it ended up costing the city of chicago anywhere between two and four billion

dollars depending on who you um who you read but it is um we're going to start in the 1890s to get to that flood to get you there we'll start about 100 years before um so I think in the episode that didn't, we didn't put out yet. We were talking about the subway and how scary it is to be a girl those buildings? Yeah. So you'll hear us talk about that in the last one, but I want to reiterate that because, man, every city is like huge buildings on top of like wormholes of tunnels, you know? Yeah, it's like super, super scary.

So many. Like, you know, if you like stick your finger in like an ant hill, you just crush like. 50,000 tunnels underneath them. That's what could happen to you in a subway. Yes. It's like that. So terrifying. It's like that in every big city.

It's crazy. Did you not think about that? So Chicago has also, honestly, I didn't, and I'm so glad I didn't. Over a decade living in New York, like maybe a couple times, but I didn't have that, like, in my psyche because that would have been really scary. Okay. I'm glad it's now embedded there.

You know, like I thought about it. I knew underground, obviously, but I didn't think about, like, just the thousands and thousands and thousands of tons above me, you know? Right, right. Better not to think about it. Yeah, better not to think about it. But Chicago is, like, built, obviously there's a river, and, like, parts of the river, they can, like, move up and down with, like, different, like, lock systems and stuff, and there's a lot of bridges. And then also, there's a lot of tunnels. So, like, the train in Chicago, there's, like, the L, the elevated train, but then also there's a subway that kind of goes underneath and around.

So there's that happening in there as well. So it's also wild to me that we used to count on like physical things for so long, like cables, you know? Like, I don't know. And in new neighborhoods, they don't have like phone lines, obviously, you know? And they don't have like the cables that like we had just come to rely on for only like 100 years. Is that true? They don't put phone lines up now? well I don't well I don't think so or if they do they're like different I don't know I feel like they probably don't keep talking because there's a new subdivision that was just like completed like a block away from me and I'm gonna I'm gonna Google Earth and see if there's telephone cables up perfect okay yeah I don't I don't think that they do um or they don't need to as much because like I remember when we talked about the um volcanoes like the first volcano that everybody knew about as it was happening because they had dropped like giant cables in the ocean

you know like it needed to be like connected somehow and not through the air yet um but there's so much more that we can do but that's what happens now isn't it like aren't we all connected through like that transatlantic cable isn't it through satellites we're so scientific i don't know my point is when these tunnels were dug in um and oh I also, like, I did see tons of cables in D.C. I saw some guys moving cables, like, through tunnels. And the way they do it is with the manholes. So they have to, like, put the cables in the manhole and then, like, have a guy underground,

scoot them over and then, like, move them that way, you know? And, like, up the manhole, whatever. I saw them do that. So, so, there are still cables. They're all underground. There's so much stuff going on underground. And this is the kind of thing that I kind of wish was part of our job when we become famous is I want to like go into these tunnels and like learn it be inside of them you know and like see what's down there when's that be cool no they'll be horribly horribly terrifying okay I'll do the tunnel part you do the tunnel part I'll just like I'll get brunch and I'll do my research that way hey I don't think there are this subdivision so for those of you in Austin I'm looking at Mueller there's it's like no I've gone many many blocks at this point and I haven't seen a single telephone line

there is or there isn't no there isn't yeah I didn't think so we had a guy come it like flooded in our front yard and we had to move some dirt and the guy came and he knocked a coat with a tractor

and then he was like do you guys use your phone line and we were like no we don't use it because like the house was made in the 80s and he goes good because I just cut it by accident so we used to have one

not anymore so let's go back to 1890 you were in Chicago And I know that did you read the devil in the white city? I feel like you might have. So I didn't read it, but I've listened to enough content around it where I feel like I've read it. It's my way of being literary without actually having to read. Cool.

So I remember there was a part of it where like in that, in this time in Chicago, they're like building so fast that like in the devil in the white city they were they talked about that there were like neighborhoods that had street lights and streets and sidewalks, but no houses, you know. Like the neighborhood was ready for them for people because like the city was growing so fast. So in 1890, the Chicago Tunnel Company was hired to build tunnels under Chicago for cables for the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company, which was like relatively brand new. Like all this was new. The tunnels were built initially to just run cables through them. But Chicago said you can't build the manholes to move the cables. because remember where I just said a second ago where the guys have to put the cables down the manhole

and then move them over and they'll have to do that now so like they weren't the Chicago City said no we don't want all these manholes around so you're not allowed to do that so they'd do it something differently so they built a narrow gauge railway which means that like the track itself was like two feet like the tunnel was seven feet wide

but the track was two feet it was like a little track so imagine like little cars on this little track they built this narrow gauge railway transport cables so it was all underground so it's connected to to the street level with like elevators and shafts that were like around the city so eventually they used it to transport coal and other things and not just the cables in london they used what they're going to build in chicago as an inspiration for their postal underground post office but there's some like shady things that were happening because this is like 1890 so

there was like there was like a strike and they like strike busted and um a lot of corruption for things things to get built um it changed hands several times and there were silver bankruptcies and like the building of these tunnels for the telegraph um essentially though it worked for what they wanted it to do they were 40 feet below sea low street level and the first 16 miles so which is a ton of tunnels that were built were kind of built on the download they didn't get the right permits

so they would dig all day with hand tools and it was kind of like a clay like sediment dirt thing they would dig all day and then they would take the dirt out of saloon basements at night

so they'd like connect to the basement of like bars and things that were open and they'd sneak the dirt out that way the tunnels were egg shaped so like this Taylor is making the profile of an egg. Got it. They were seven feet, six inches high and six feet wide.

The walls were 10 inches thick and some were a little bit larger, but that's basically it. What does that mean the walls were 10 inches thick? Isn't it a million miles thick? No, no, no. Because there's like some pictures that I'll post it. I'll share with you, but they're like, you know, you can like go in either direction, you know, because you have to like, so some of them are next to each other. what did i google to like see what these tunnels look like a chicago tunnel is going to do it no google the chicago tunnel company

but don't google it yet because i don't want you to know what's here what's going to happen i'm going to hit enter and i'm going to open the tab okay okay okay so um so they were the tunneling was they would do it 24 hours a day just like get it done but they could uh complete two miles a year like or so like by hand like it would take it it took but it got faster as like they got better on it and they would obviously do it like in different directions. The dirt would be taken out by mules on carts. And if a building had, and I'm going to say this a couple times,

but like if a building had a deep sub basement, they didn't need an elevator to access it. So that's like a basement under a basement under a basement. They wouldn't need an elevator. They could just like directly connect to the tunnels. They, there were electric pumps just in case it flooded. But for the most part, like there was a little bit of natural moisture that they were like not really worried about it flooding they did have some watertight doors in

different sections just in case it flooded but it didn't it didn't flood while it was in use um the things that they were worried about were like obviously like chuggo is next to a lake and there's rivers you know so like flooding that way but also if a building that was above these tunnels caught on fire and the water used to like oh do that that could have flooded the tunnels as well so they were that those are kind of what they were worried about um by 1914 60 miles of tunnels had been dug underneath Chicago. It connected with the street level. There were 19 elevators that went to different, like, department stores and, like, the post office and places where you could, where you would want to, like, deliver things without being, like, on the street.

There were also five elevators around Chicago where you could, like, pick up packages, the general public could, which is kind of cool. Yeah, it's kind of cool. you know so you just like kind of like an Amazon locker sorry Luna's like basically doing Raygun's routine on the ground here and it's like creating this like weird creepy sound where it sounds like someone's like clawing at the doors which is her just like moving her paws on the floor

everything in here got like eerily quiet because there's a guy working on the shed outside and he stopped sawing so I don't have like the sawing in my head and I'm like was I muted the whole time I just said that no I heard you So weird. Okay, go ahead. Okay. So basically, they have the Amazon locker you could pick up on the street level, which is cool.

There were 132 electric locomotives, and there were like hundreds of excavating cars and coal moving cars. Obviously, you can move coal through these as well. That was something that was like really popular because they used coal all the time during this time. by 1920 so after like 20 years of being in use they removed all the telephone cables and they only used it for commerce for like moving packages and coal and things back and forth um it's cute pictures of like the engineers are basically on like a little toy train you know like the kids would go on in a park yeah that's how it is under the capital where they have that under round thing the railroad thing something called the under round roof you know what I mean so it's also I mean what a job you're like underground all day and there's like little railroad wild so they did try to use it for like the regular USPS but it didn't work they couldn't like get packages places in time so it's kind of like a different way to to send things mostly like wholesale goods and things so this was really useful at the time because you know like the street level people are like just getting cars there's horses everywhere presumably horse poop everywhere. You need another way to get around. As they started to build those Chicago subway lines, they took over some of the tunnels or made them wider, but for the most part, they like didn't run into each other. In the 40s, in the 1940s, trucks got better delivering coal. People didn't

need them as much. And also, like I said, been a lot of corruption and back and forth with who owns it. So they tried to make some money selling the air in the tunnels for air conditioning and heating. because it was like cooler down there during the summer so they would push the air up into like a theater or like a big building to make a little bit cooler and then same in the winter the air under the air would be warmer in the tunnels so they would shoot the warm air up into buildings

so they tried to make money that way but by 1956 nothing was working and the tunnels were abandoned. So now we have 60 miles of abandoned tunnel under Chicago and we're going to forget about it as a people. Crazy. Cool. So now it's 1992.

The Bulls have two-peded. They have one more to go. Ghostbusters 2 came out in 1989, so we know the dangers of tunnels. Yes, that was a documentary. I recall that. Now we know. So the Kinsey Street Bridge

in Chicago needs new pilings. So, as I know, Chicago, lots of rivers. There's lots of rivers and a piling on a on a bridge is like the sticks in the ground you know it's the foundation on which the bridge is built yes so it needs new pilings and um the old pilings are too close to the bridge tenders house because is one of those bridges where traffic stops and it goes up yeah and then boats go through so somebody has to work there so they can't move the piling's because they're worried that the uh that like the engineer's house is going to fall into the river so

So the city of Chicago says you can build them three and a half feet away. So just like a little bit away from the last ones, they're going to build the new ones. And these pilings went into the mud or whatever. And the rumor is that those piling themselves crunched a hole into the old tunnels. But it wasn't that. Like they moved the earth and then like that eventually displaced earth caused a hole. So it didn't happen like immediately. But it happened, like, with the pressure from the piling.

Sure. You know? So eventually it's going to punch a car size hole, like car size across, in one of the old tunnels. But they didn't know that this was happened. They didn't know they had done that. I mean, they didn't know that it had happened. It was like a slow, a slow roll. Like, it didn't.

And the tunnels had not been, um, let's see, the tunnels had not been taking, like, obviously maintained. So like a lot of the flood doors they had built in the beginning were no longer there. it was just like empty tunnels you know yeah so this happens about like a year i think like i read a bunch of articles and i think like almost a year before the flood it's when it like starts happening and then it's going to kind of start to get like worse and worse so uh telecable guy telecommunications guy found the leak like he saw it he was like it's leaking down here like there's water coming in i don't get so somebody went down into the ton this abandoned tom who

are these people? Well, it's not a telecommunications worker, so I think it's like a guy who has to lay more cables because you're like, we're not we need cables for what it was called direct TV. I don't know, whatever. It's a scary job. Such a scary job. God, I'm so glad like I just chose like working in technology. Like, I know. Otherwise you'd be a tunnel digger. It's like every time i see that show like sam bro like dirty jobs like thank god you people exist because if not for y'all like yeah i would never have done this on my own totally so this guy goes down there and he is like it's a little too wet down here for my tastes and he tells someone everybody is like that isn't my fucking problem you know like not my problem they're like because the tunnels now

it's been like 40 years since they were shut down and they go underneath like private buildings and places that people who, like, own a building and didn't even know they were there, you know? So they're like, whose problem is it when these tunnels that exist that don't really belong to anybody that have been essentially foreclosed on, like, need help? You know, whose problem is this? And they can't figure out whose problem it is. So nobody wants to have responsibility. And in the meantime, like the pressure is just building and building and it's just like slowly leaking.

And it's going to eventually flood, you know? so in the meantime it's building and building and so Chicago's downtown is called the loop do you know this do you know this no Chicago's downtown is called the loop it's just like area you can drive around that's what downtown is called so in the loop which is where like the big buildings are, you know, downtown, on the early morning of Monday, April 13th, 1992, the basements in the loop start to flood. And people are like, this is weird. Like, every basement is flooding at the same time. Like, usually, like, if a water main breaks, it'll be like one basement will flood, you know, or like two. But like all basements are flooding.

The Army Corps of Engineers happens to be there. And they get a call and they're like, the guy answers the phone is like it's not raining like what the hell like what why could how could it be flooding you know where is where they're coming from um and because there wasn't water in the streets at this point it's just the basement starting to flood so like this something weird is happening all basins are flooding but as it gets worse and more basements start to flood of like big department stores of like the hall of records like all these buildings are flooding um they cut the power in the loop so they turn the power off in the downtown business district of chicago um around like 10 in the morning and that's when my dad had to come home because the computer stopped working that you couldn't do

anything. Why does that help the flooding? Well, it doesn't have the flooding, but it helps people from getting like electrocuted. Uh, right. You know, water and electricity. Yeah. So they cut the power and everybody has to go. So there's some great, um, photos of like people in their 90s clothes, like walking through puddles, but it's like sunny and they're like walking over like big hoses as people try to pump the water out of their buildings. Um, some of the buildings with the deep basements have like up to 40 feet of water inside the basement there's a lot of damage to things that are stored like really low so in this i have a chicago tribute article that i'll show you and there's a woman who works at marshall field which is like the main department store there

and she's like sitting on the stairs looking at like a flooded basement and the basement that's flooded is the third basement which is such a scary word do you think so three basements down yeah how dark it is in here right now. So I feel like that's one of the scariest things that can exist. But nobody knows where the water's coming from, right? So it's like starting to be like noon and it's been flooding for several hours, but they don't know where this water is coming from. They don't know why all these basements all around Chicago are flooded.

So finally, someone at this big building called the Merchandise Mart is like one of the biggest buildings in Chicago when it was built in, this incidentally, it was built in 1930. It had its own, it was the largest building in the world, and it had its own zip code until 2008. It is a wholesale, like, showroom building where you can, like, buy furniture and buy things. It was owned by the Kennedy family, and one of Bobby Kennedy's, presumably not idiot children, ran it very successfully for a while. In 1983, the Sultan of Bernay spent $1.6 million at the merchandise mart to furnish his entire palace. He said it was the only place. place where that task could be completed in one week, which is hilarious. And like, have you been to IKEA? That was my thought. And then I looked up, I know you have not. This is such a non-suck order, but for our readers in the Girl with a Dragon tattoo, there's

a part where she furnishes her whole apartment at IKEA in like one go and it's so fun. Because you just like, she just like buys like, you know, 10 chairs and a bunch of beds and like stuff. And it's just like, imagine just being able to go like whatever you want. Like how you started saying, have you read? I know you haven't. And you just got to skip right past it. I skipped it.

Because when we first started, I was looking at the stuff that she bought in her apartment because people have obviously figured it out and, like, put it all on a blog. And it's just really fun. But so anyway, that doesn't matter. But this big building happens to be next to the bridge that had been repiled recently. And so there's a radio reporter named Larry Langford who is listening to the police scanner, so try to figure out what the hell is going on. And here's a call that someone from the

merchandise smart building calls in and says, you know, we know that all the basements in town are flooding. I've heard that in the news. But in our basement, there's fish. So, like, I feel like we're probably, it's like probably coming directly from the river, you know, because there's fish in here. Right. And also, there's a vortex outside in the river.

Should that, should that be there? Basically, like, a drain in the river right next to the bridge. So Larry from the radio reporter drove there and got there before the police because he was like, I think this is it. I think this is where it's coming from. So the vortex is essentially this hole and it's bringing the water in and then going through the tunnels and then pushing out the top of the tunnels through the elevator shafts and the like elevator shafts and the like all. the things they had built in the past people had just forgotten about you know that's that's what's happening

they finally figure out that's what's happening eventually some like more there's simply a scientific reason like water doesn't naturally go up right water what tries to hit sea level oh so if the basements

were below where the river is yeah that's where you're okay yes yes because some of them some of the basements like are up to like the door of the tunnel also got it okay you know and then as the tunnels get full of water they're going to it's going to rise right yep yep um so eventually they have to like send someone down there to be like what is down there you know they don't know so they go down they find the hole

by this time the hole is 20 feet wide and they just start throwing shit into it they throw rocks they throw mattresses they throw cement they're like how can we plug up this hole like this is going be a problem. They're able to drain the river a little bit around it because of the locks, the lock system, until someone is like, we have this new cement, potentially from the Army Corps of Engineers, potentially from a man named Brian Rice of Material Service Corporation or Kennedy Construction. That's something different in every single article I read. But they find a new cement that's like quick drying and they're able to, like quick setting and they're able to use that because they drill holes on the other side of the tunnel where the hole is and fill that so they're able to kind of stop it.

They don't plug the hole, but they like make new holes on the other side and make essentially those waterproof doors that they should have made in the first place. Yeah, that makes sense. And then stop it. Incidentally, the Army Corps of Engineers, they are in charge of like highways and rivers and they're as old as time. They were created in the Continental Congress on June 16, 1775, which I think it thought was cool. I don't know that. Yeah. They're that old.

it took days obviously to clean up and reopen it cost the city of chicago between two and four billion dollars it said that the like the chicago mercantile exchange and other stock markets lost like billions of dollars in trading that day because they weren't able to do anything and and people had to commute differently a lot of the subways were closed for a while and they had to like have like alternate ways around it. Businesses were pumping water out via huge hoses. So for the next couple of weeks, they were just like huge hoses and dehumidifiers and stuff

trying to get all the water out of these basements and sub-basements of these huge buildings. Insurance wanted to call it a flood because you know how you need separate flood insurance? Right. Then your house. But flood was like, not exactly what happened. It's not like it was like a flood because of nature.

So they called it a leak. So they were able to get insurance money. So some people call it the Great Chicago League and that flood. Insurance companies, they'll find a way. Yeah. They'll try at least. It's never really been decided whose fault it was. Some people were saying that the new piling went right into the tunnels and that the people who were putting those in should have known that they were there.

But they were like, we didn't know that they were there. And it seems like not many people knew that the tunnels were there anyway. The way that the tunnels usually worked underneath the Chicago River is they went straight. they like went with the river under scary under the river with the river in the middle of the river right but the this bridge the kinsie bridge was one of those bridges um at the time that it was built where it had a pillar in the middle and the bridge swung rather than lifted oh okay yeah you know what I mean yeah I'm sure I'm sure this is really helpful the visual's helping the bridge swung and um so the tunnels were built around that middle piling so they maybe they assumed that the tunnel the tunnel was

in the middle of the river like it was in like 90% of the bridge cases but in this case it wasn't it was on the side so like it's unclear like if they knew that or not um but eventually i think it just like went to court and like some people were in trouble forever no one like went to jail or anything and nobody died which is great um so um they did some things to kind of fix it so you know they put in those waterproof doors they wanted to make sure that it doesn't doesn't happen again if any of this happens but the tunnels are essentially still there one of them collapsed recently when they were filling it with cement to just close it up when they were building a road above it so like there's still like you said like this like ant hill of holes like all around the city of chicago and i'm sure many other cities as well um and i also found two t-shirts on ebay that say i survived the great chicago flag of 1992 they're vintage from 1992 um i thought was really fun i'll put those online as well because people started making t-shirts like right away so that that's that they could have them and that's it so basically the city paid for all this yeah um

i went to floods are so such a nightmare like it is like one of the worst things that happens like in in nature because it literally just ruins everything like you will never get that smell out you will never you have to just like tear out dry wall and maybe even like some of the some of the studs um to get out of the out of the system but it's interesting too because i was in houston like i don't even know like maybe like a month ago and um even then you see the after effects of flooding where things are just down and and then i was about houston specifically because like it happens like every hurricane season every hurricane season there's pictures of somebody on the roof of their car on like a highway or something and and they're trying to like get through a

flood and it's like man you gotta get out of there so at least this is a national occurrence for Chicago yes which is great yeah Houston's 50 feet above sea level um which seems like a lot I mean hold on the way I see um not enough I'm 3,000 feet above sea level I think of sea level my yeah nearly 500 feet yeah

yeah the kids in time we're like what if the ocean like floods all the way up to here I was like if the ocean floods all the way up to our house I would tap on this mountain

then like we're fucked everything else everybody else is already dead yeah everyone else is already dead don't worry about it so was this litigated

does this go to court it looks like it did but I don't know exactly what the answers were because like the companies that were involved in like making the tunnel were gone so like no one owned the tunnel anymore is kind of existed

and I think that the the company that put in the pilings they got they were not in trouble in trouble for it because they were able to prove that like they didn't know that they were there but in the end like the city had to pay for it anyway because there's so much damage

it just kind of like came out of nowhere so apparently Okay, keep talking I got to air you with something. Okay, you let me know you're the lawyer. No, I think what you're saying about flooding, I remember when there was a big flood in Florida one time looking at people's houses

when there's just like water all the way up to your kitchen counters. Like everything in your house is garbage now. It's crazy. And also you just, you know what it is? It's like I have this like thing in me where when I know what is coming ahead is just going to be horrible and arduous. I just want to like give up right then and there.

and with a flood it's like this is my life for the next like this smell in all of this shit it's just it's a way of life like your way of life just literally changes because you got to work around the fact that now my carpets are full of mold so now I got to hire a contractor the contractor's late and then he the the drywall guy showed up before the floor guy it's just like I know awful nightmare we have friends in L.A. who bought like a big beautiful house like up in those feelings and it flooded like a water being broke they'd take it down to like the studs it was terrible do i know them no it said as a video of like they have like a walk-in closet and it was just like a waterfall like going all over all their stuff it was terrible and in that condition like literally

the best you could ever hope for is please let insurance cover at least some of this in a lot of cases like i said they'll find a way not to cover any of this yeah so apparently okay so i was wondering this because I remember a while ago that there was some talks about Chicago filing for bankruptcy because they were in like a horrible, horrible financial condition. And I was looking up like what you were as you were talking about how the the debt obligation that they incurred on the cleanup was yeah, like you said like two, three billion dollars about four and a half billion dollars is of today, which even for a city of Chicago size, like an unexpected four billion dollar.

you don't mean like yeah yeah like it's like for me or you to be like oh by the way you need you need to come with like 70 grand for something it's like well that's not that easy to just pull out 70 grand out of my ass like tomorrow yeah yeah yeah and so apparently chicago is the number two most financially precarious city in the u.s due to well due to a lot of things, but a part of it has to do with debt. So I would imagine that this also contributed to that. Yeah.

She can't help. Yeah. Number one is Detroit. It wasn't that long ago also. I mean, it was like 30 years ago, whatever, but it, yeah, I'm sure they still have, like, debt from it, you know?

Because it's just, like, unexpected, like you said. Yeah. Wild. Are there pictures you want me to look at? Yeah, let me show you that this article is cool. This article is like just, I'm just going to copy the images of it and put them online because it's from the Tribune. I think it's like an old one, so like the words are kind of weird, but the pictures are great. So it's like, you can see people like, just look in a basement, like, what are we going to do?

You know, you can see the piling and people walking through the streets. You see a guy two days later with the S-R-5, the Great Chicago Flood t-shirt. They did this in like 92. They made it look like it was like 1850. You know, all these are black and white. This guy, this old guy holds a fish he found.

Great. Wow. Yeah, that Marshall Fields, I mean, the fact that what is underneath her, oh my God, that's so scary.

I know. Like, what is even in there? What is she going to do? It's so scary. What's, yeah of course sell everything who gives a shit yeah so yeah look at these was crazy he's like yeah you're right that's only 32 years ago but man we look different back then we did we did and i love

i mean chicago guys really look like those saturday night live chicago guys i know i know that is not a fucking joke yeah it's so funny like i just like you guys could be any of these guys and like his like started jacket you know like banging on his chest so good it's so fun yeah this also reminded me of that one episode I did where there was that company who had built all those underground tunnels for the salt mine and um it ended it was abandoned many many decades or whatever century later and then somebody was like building something on top of it and then like drilled through it and all of a sudden it like caused a vortex that flooded yeah flooded all of them um yeah which is again another terrifying stuff like that just freaks

me out i don't know why i can't handle that i have such weird phobias that have like they're not rational phobias like nobody should fear tunnels but like no i think everybody said very hurdles i was in london one time and with like very cool people and like a very cool wine bar that was like in an old tunnel like under the ground and so like the wall was all like you know like a dome you're like in this dome and I had a panic attack and the guy was with was like this has been here like 300 years Taylor calmed down I was like this been over 300 years so I had you got out of here you don't yeah 300 years and maybe a day you don't know today's the day yeah this were brand new and I'd be like maybe this is oh you tell me it's old I'm just like get me out of here yeah

yeah he was unimpressed with me but I was like I'm going to do this no way um cool that's it end of my Chicago stories for the time being but I'm sure there will be more I'm sure that I do I would love if you wanted to ever cover the reversal of the Chicago River that'll be kind of fun oh yeah that does sound fun yeah because that also sounds terrifying and like what is what what are humans doing actually I know I mean there's so many like I was thinking you could do like obviously like so much mob stuff that you could do there um and there's um oh what else just like the politics because it's interesting too.

Like there's like seven mayor dailies or maybe two, but I want to know more about them. One of the pictures is a Mayor Daly, Richard Daly, walking down the street. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, the mob stuff, the crime stuff. It's funny because the politics of the mob are kind of like the exact same thing. Oh, totally. Which is which. I feel like we might get there when we like, I think it's probably similar because I know we want to talk about Tammany Hall

in some way. If we can like do that together somehow and like think about somehow, we just have to do it. But like, like figure out how to do that you know it could be a thing where we do like dual like parallels of like yeah hammony hall and then like you do that and then i do like more modern politics and how like one mirrors the other yeah that could be fun well sweet thanks for sharing um and i'm going to promise to edit this on time unlike this week we're fine we are we are busy it's

going to be a couple months of craziness we're fine everything's fine um sweet anything you want to read out no I um no just thanks everyone

please tell your friends and we'll keep going boom love it okay awesome uh doom to feld pod oh yeah on the socials at doom to fall pod and wishing Taylor a speedy recovery from her latest COVID diagnosis

I know I'm like slowly fading like I feel my face getting just full of snob. On that, no, we're going to go ahead and cut this off. Okay, bye. Stop recording.