CALUMET CITY (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Residents of Calumet City, Dolton and Burnham are continuing to clean up from torrential rain on Sunday.
There’s still water in basements, and city leaders are trying to figure out how to weather such storms in the future.
The City Engineer for Calumet City, Ken Chastain, said this event was unprecedented.
“Calumet City was, along with its neighbors, in the middle, really, of a major depression, a force of storm that was so significant that Illinois Water Service calls it a ‘500-year event,’ so significant we were actually getting so much water that the system that we have simply could not take in that amount of water, 9.5 inches, over two-and-a-half hours,” Chastain said.
Calumet City Mayor Thaddeus Jones said poor, mostly Black south suburban communities are seeing the results of decades of neglect.
He figured each would need a billion dollars in upgrades.
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