Just saw that the Chicago river is expected to flood and sandbags are being placed. This brings to mind the flooding that occurred a few (when) years ago flooded the old Chicago RR tunnels and that in turn allowed water to get into many buildings. Question: Has the potential for a repeat of that flooding been mitigated? Since I was out of the country at that time I vaguely remember that Chicago Union Station and the Amtrak Yard was also threatened. You chicago people can give a much more accurate update of the situation now.
I was living in Chicago at the time of the tunnel flood. The immediate reason for the flood was that a pile driver punched through one of the tunnels under the river, and thus flooded everything connected to it to the level of the river. The underlying reason this happened was that the floodgates the tunnel company had installed to prevent just this kind of disaster were left in the "open" position and not maintained after the tunnel trains ceased operations. Since the tunnel flood, bulkheads have been installed at all of the river crossings. So long as those who work in the tunnels from time to time remember to close the access hatches, there shouldn't be a repeat.
Many of the surviving tunnels, by the way, are still used for things like fiber optic cables, steam lines, etc. There is also a tunnel train at Illinois Railway Museum, which was removed from a tunnel near the Field Museum when Lake Shore Drive was realigned..
I don't have any info on the current river situation (I don't live in Chicago now).
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