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September 28, 2008

Flooding affects area parishes, schools, agencies

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

As the rain kept falling the weekend of Sept . 12-13, Bobby Walls of Dolton knew the water would come up in her basement. That’s why she doesn’t really keep anything on the floor.

But her teenage foster-daughter wasn’t so lucky, losing several pairs of shoes and clothing that she had left in baskets on the basement floor. The water ended up a little shy of knee-deep, said Walls, who was back at work at Catholic Charities’ South Suburban Office Sept. 17.

That was the first day the office’s three-day-a-week food pantry had opened since a deluge of rain, that spun off from Hurricane Ike, soaked the area, leading to flooding in the Northwest, West and South suburbs, as well as areas of Chicago, as rivers and creeks burst their banks and storm sewers backed up.

Charities responds

Catholic Charities’ South Holland office had a larger-thanusual number of clients coming in for food, because the office was closed on Sept. 15. That meant the food pantry had also missed its regular delivery from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, said Walls, who works for Catholic Charities a few hours each day and then stays on as a volunteer to coordinate the food pantry.

Just down the hall, volunteer Olive Banks was helping clients in the clothing room.

The room was doing a brisk business in the wake of flooding, and some clients mentioned that they had lost clothes because of flooding. One said she has been forced out of a ground-level apartment.

Banks, a South Holland resident, also had some water in her basement, but only had to throw out a couple of rugs, she said.

“You know it’s going to happen, so we don’t keep anything down there,” she said.

Schools closed

Seton Academy, the Catholic high school that leases space to Catholic Charities in South Holland, was closed Sept. 15-16 because of the flooding, but not because of damage to the school. Rather, its parking lots and roads leading to the building were under water.

Several other Catholic schools closed on Sept. 15, most because flooding blocked streets getting to them, although a few had some water.

St. John the Evangelist in Streamwood flooded for the third time in two years. The parish is planning a $600,000 project to divert storm water away from the church, with work set to begin this fall. There was damage to furniture and to computer systems, with water causing problems in the Reservation Chapel and offices.

Water damage

At Divine Infant Jesus School in Westchester, the custodian and employees of a cleaning service spent that day getting the water out of the lower level of one wing, where preschool and kindergarten classrooms had a couple of inches of water, along with a science lab and some offices.

Leonard Gramarossa, the school’s principal, said the school would reopen Sept. 16 for all grades except preschool, with the kindergartners and sixth graders who use the science lab as a homeroom moved upstairs. Rugs for the young students to sit on were to be replaced, and workers were determining which equipment could be cleaned and which had to be discarded.

At St. Edna Parish in Arlington Heights, water started to fill up the boiler room, but did not get high enough to cause severe damage, said Father Jerome Jacob, the pastor. It could have been worse without a supplemental pump the parish purchased last year.

“Without that, the water might have reached our electrical boards,” he said.

In nearby Elk Grove Village, Queen of the Rosary parishioners were holding a fundraiser in a tent in the parking lot during the height of the storm Sept. 14, despite the water flowing over the pavement. At one point, firefighters evacuated an apartment building across the street – and the parishioners welcomed one of the families to eat with them, said Father Ed Pelrine, the pastor.

Overall, most Catholic parishes, schools and agencies followed Bobby Walls’ example in thanking God it wasn’t worse.

“You can see on TV so many people that had it worse than us,” said Walls, noting that some parts of northwest Indiana were still underwater days after the rain stopped. “All you can do is pray, and thank God.”