- [Narrator] Coming Up.

- [Anthony Hatch] People described it as like something out of hell.

- [Narrator] A matinee at Chicago's most extravagant theater.

- A lot of mothers with children, families, grandparents, out for a holiday break.

- [Narrator] Ended in the deadliest building fire in American history.

- When the audience tried to escape, it really became a nightmare because there was no exit.

- [Narrator] A horrific disaster that still haunts us today.

- When you found out about the corruption that went on, those deaths didn't need to happen.

- It really did make people all around the world stop and think, could this happen to me?

- [Narrator] And then... - Monday, April 13th, 1992 will long be remembered by Chicagoans as the day of the great Loop underground flood.

- [Narrator] A disaster lurking 40 feet below the city.

- It was confusing because it hadn't been raining.

- [Narrator] That unearthed a long forgotten piece of Chicago history.

- The problem is nobody was really aware of the tunnels.

- [Narrator] A perfect storm fueled by a torrent of political missteps.

- This is a very serious problem, don't make it funny.

- It was like, here's the smoking gun.

This was a problem that didn't need to be a problem.

- Nobody had any idea that this thing was about to blow and it blew.

(water gushing) - [Narrator] Downtown Disasters.

Next, on Chicago Stories.

(melodious music) - Anticipation was in the air at the brand new Iroquois Theater at Randolph and Dearborn Streets.

It had sold out every one of its 1,600 seats, but close to 2,000 people entered the theater on December 30th, 1903.

- Well, it was a Christmas holiday matinee.

The house was overbooked.

The management allowed people to come in, some of them with camp chairs, and plop down in the aisles.

- [Narrator] They were here to see Mr. Blue Beard, which was having a successful run since the theater opened it's doors weeks earlier.

Leading the cast was Chicago native and veteran actor, Eddie Foy.

- He had strong identification with Chicago.

Even though he was a national figure, Chicagoans viewed him somewhat as one of their own.

He can sing a song, and he can tell a joke, and he could dance, and he had charisma, personality.

- People loved him and the kinds of acts that he would put on, dressed in drag, usually.

They loved him in Chicago, they loved him everywhere.

- [Narrator] 30 years earlier, as a teenager, Eddie had survived the great Chicago fire.

- They lived in a neighborhood of wooden shacks occupied mostly by Irish, and he was told by an older brother to get a niece and get her out of the path of this fire.

Well, he succeeded in doing so, but he and his niece were kind of on their own for days.

And I think the horrors that he saw and the fact that the whole city was being consumed, it had a profound effect on Foy.

- [Narrator] Eddie was about to play the role of hero once again, in a much deadlier fire.

(audience applauding) - At its grand opening five weeks earlier, the Iroquois had become the latest addition to the city's burgeoning theater district.

- At this time in Chicago's history, Chicago is really trying to establish itself as one of the nation's premier cities, but it didn't necessarily have a great reputation for being a beautiful city, and things like the Iroquois Theater were opportunities for Chicago to really elevate its reputation as a world-class city.

- [Narrator] Its owners, including general manager Will J. Davis, spared no expense.

- It cost $1.1 million, which was an astronomical amount of money at that time when a working man's salary for the year might be $600 or so.

- [Narrator] The investment was paying off.

- When the reporters wrote about this, they'd say, oh, you know, there's only maybe two theaters in New York that could rival this.

The doors apparently are mahogany and glass.

It had marble all over the place, with gold, with large pillars.

- [Narrator] For Eddie Foy, who had spent his life in theaters, this one stood out.

- [Eddie Foy] The theater was one of the finest that had yet been built in this country.

It had a magnificent promenade foyer, like an old world palace hall with a ceiling 60 feet from the floor and grand staircases ascending on either side.

- [Narrator] It's architect, Benjamin H. Marshall, had promised theater goers much more than an opulent setting for a show.

- That language of absolutely fireproof was not only something that was expected by building inspectors and by city officials when permits were being applied for, but it was the kind of rhetoric that audiences expected to hear as well because the Chicago population had been seared by fire.

They'd literally seen fire destroy their city.

- [Eddie] We were told that the theater was the very last word in efficiency, convenience, and most important of all, in safety.

- [Narrator] But what Eddie and audience members weren't told was that corners had been cut to open the theater in time.

Construction had been behind schedule.

- The owners were under a lot of pressure to open the show for the fall season, so the presumption is that there were a number of cutbacks done by the Fuller Construction Company and local Chicago companies.

- It was, oh, let's get this job done fast.

We got to get it done in time for the season.

- [Narrator] City inspectors had been offered free show tickets to ensure favorable reports about the theater's preparedness.

- People, dare I say at that time, the grand old Chicago tradition, were paid off to look the other way.

- [Narrator] On December 30th, an unsuspecting audience filed into their seats.

From backstage, Eddie Foy could see that the theater was especially crowded.

He had brought his six-year-old son, Brian, to the show.

- [Eddie] I made one final effort to get a seat for him down in front, but found that there were none left, so I put him on a little stool in the first entrance at the right of the stage, a sort of alcove near the switchboard.

- [Narrator] Audience members came from 13 states and 86 cities and towns.

- It was part of the Edwardian era, so many of them were dressed to the nines.

They were there to show off and be seen.

A lot of them wearing gifts that they had received at Christmas.

The audience was comprised mostly of women and children that afternoon.

It was, after all, a holiday matinee.

(audience laughing) - [Eddie] It struck me as I looked out over the crowd during the first act, that I had never before seen so many women and children in the audience.

There were several parties of girls in their teens.

- [Narrator] One of those girls was 18-year old Viva Rose Jackson, a high school student from the city's north side.

- Viva was in a club with eight of her friends, they're local to the Humboldt Boulevard area.

The club was kind of a study club, a having fun sort of club.

It was, I would imagine, it was probably more a having fun club than study club.

- [Narrator] Viva and the other club members were chaperoned by a friend's mother.

They intended to purchase seats together, but their party was separated.

- The mother and the two younger siblings went down to the ground floor and the girls were up on the balcony.

That wasn't how they were supposed to be seated but I can imagine the girls were kind of excited to be away from the mother.

- [Narrator] From the balcony, Viva and her friends took in Act One.

- I imagine Viva was pretty excited to be there, there with friends right after Christmas.

It probably felt kind of festive and celebratory.

- [Narrator] Act Two began shortly after three o'clock.

- [Eddie Foy] At the beginning of the second act, a double octet, eight men and eight women, had a very pretty number called "In The Pale Moonlight."

- The men were dressed in military garb and the women in pretty gowns.

And of course, what are these couples going to do but smooch, probably in the Pale Moonlight.

And in order to create the effect of the Moonlight, they had a large arc lamp.

And the lamp, the way it was built, was to create mood but also to serve as something of a spotlight.

- [Eddie] The stage was flooded with bluish light while they sang and danced.

It was then that the trouble began.

(dramatic music) - The fire started backstage due to a carbon arc lamp, a spotlight.

It overheated and set off sparks that immediately caught on to backstage curtains.

- The singers reported that they noticed it but they continued with their song.

And it started to go above and then across.

They're supposed to be vents but the vents were sealed shut, so pieces of fire and wood are starting to fall.

- The audience, some of them realized what was happening almost immediately, but many of them sat mesmerized, particularly children.

This was a show that had lots of special effects, unique for the time, and a lot of these kids thought this was just one of the special effects.

They sat transfixed.

- [Narrator] Viva Jackson and her friends looked on from the balcony.

- I imagine with a situation like that, people aren't very sure if something wrong is going on.

- [Narrator] Backstage, stagehands tried to extinguish the fire with canisters of Kyl Fire, a powder that, according to the label, was to be forcibly thrown into the flames.

When that didn't work, they tried beating the fire out.

- Stagehands tried to put it out with wooden battens.

It was out of their reach, it was moving too fast.

- [Narrator] The fire quickly traveled to the rafters above the stage.

- There was hundreds of pounds of scenery docked up above in the rafters.

- Part of the problem was they used paint and stuff on the scenery, which was flammable.

It was supposed to be covered with retardant.

- [Narrator] From his dressing room, Eddie could hear commotion.

(audience screaming in panic) - [Eddie] My first thought was, I wonder if they're fighting down there again, for there had been a row a few days before among the supers and stagehands.

But the noise swelled in volume and suddenly, I became frightened.

Instantly, I knew there was something deadly wrong.

It could be nothing else but fire.

My first thought was for Brian and I ran downstairs.

- [Narrator] On stage, the actors continued to perform.

- [Stuart J. Hecht] They were disciplined and they were singing straight out to the audience as they had been instructed to do.

- [Narrator] The theater's house fireman called for someone to pull the fire alarm box.

But in their rush to open, the Iroquois owners had not installed one.

- They sent a stagehand around the corner to go to the Fire Station 13, which was the closest station.

Valuable minutes and seconds were going by.

- [Narrator] Eddie was still trying to get to his son.

- [Eddie] I ran around into the wing shouting for Brian.

On stage, those brave boys and girls, bless them, were still singing and doing their steps, though the girl's voices were beginning to falter a little.

- [Narrator] Eddie was relieved to locate Brian.

He grabbed him and headed for the rear, but something compelled him to stop.

- [Eddie] All those women and children out in front haunted me, the hundreds of little ones who would be helpless, trodden underfoot in a panic.

I must do what I could to save them.

I tossed Brian into the arms of a stagehand crying, "Take my boy out!"

I paused a moment to watch him running toward the rear doors, then I turned and ran out onto the stage.

- [Narrator] Eddie emerged through the ranks of the performers who continued dancing as the scenery blazed around them.

- [Eddie] As I reached the footlights, one of the girls fainted and another performer picked her up and carried her off.

- [Narrator] Offstage, terror and panic spread through the audience.

- People saw the actors were afraid and that's when they started to get clued in that this was not how it was supposed to go.

One of Viva's friends saw Viva running, so yes, she did try to escape.

- [Narrator] As the crowd surged toward the exits, Eddie tried to keep them calm.

- [Eddie] I was a grotesque figure to come before an audience at so serious an occasion in tights and comic shoes.

- You can imagine this man standing in his costume with flame fluttering down around him.

- [Eddie] Don't get excited, there's no danger.

Take it easy.

Take your time, folks.

No danger.

- Eddie turned to the orchestra pit where the conductor was leading a 26 piece orchestra.

He said, we need some music.

- I said, "Play, start an overture, anything, but play!"

And sidewise into the wings I yelled, "The asbestos curtain!

For God's sake, doesn't anybody know how to lower this curtain?"

- [Narrator] The asbestos curtain was intended to protect the audience in case of a fire.

- The curtain got caught on a piece of lighting equipment about six feet above the stage itself.

- [Narrator] In a desperate attempt to escape, cast members pushed open double doors at the back of the stage.

- When they opened the scenery doors they created a huge draft with the flames going up into the loft of the theater, mixing with the superheated gas and fumes coming from the burning scenery docks.

That combination proved to be devastating.

(fire roaring) - It was a fireball that burst out from under the curtain and into the audience and up into the balconies, incinerating people as it went.

- [Eddie] Many spectators described it as an explosion, a huge billow of flame leapt out past me and over me, and seemed to even reach the balconies.

- 70% Of the people who were killed, were killed then, in the balcony.

In the balcony were mostly mothers and children.

- [Eddie] A shower of blazing fragments fell over me.

A fringe on the edge of the curtain just above my head was burning and as I glanced up, the curtain itself was disintegrating.

- Some people were crashing out of the balconies.

There was general panic in this theater.

There must've been a lot of wailing, and screaming, and shouting.

And it was frankly, every man for himself.

- Viva was up on that balcony.

She had thought about jumping out.

All of a sudden, it's just out of control panic.

- [Narrator] Viva Jackson tried desperately to outrun the flames, but escape from the Iroquois Theater was proving impossible.

Several of the exits were unmarked and some were even covered by thick drapery.

- Marshall didn't want exit signs to be displayed in the theater because he thought it would ruin the look.

He was all for the design.

- [Narrator] Patrons searched for the doors they had entered through, only to find them blocked.

Theater management had installed accordion gates to prevent people from sneaking into more expensive seats.

- The ushers, young, untrained, no fire drills, didn't know what to do.

Some of them panicked and ran, others refused to open the gates.

And a lot of people perished up against those grills.

- [Narrator] Others found exits but discovered that the doors opened in, not out.

- Can you imagine being stuck behind a crowd that's pressed up against doors that won't open, and people are behind you, pushing you, and what happens?

- [Narrator] And the exit of last resort, the fire escapes, had never been completed.

- The biggest tragedy is they put the fire escape signs up so they'd seen the fire escape signs, but as they stepped out from the smoke-filled doorway, they were falling to their death.

- There was no place to go.

Some people jumped off these platforms and died on the cobblestones below.

- Over 125 people were found dead just at the base of where the fire escape would have been, and the survivors of that were only surviving because they were falling on the bodies of the people who had died before them.

- [Narrator] Fire Engine Company 13 arrived within minutes but struggled to get inside past the crush of people trying to exit.

The last of the musicians had now fled the theater.

Eddie Foy was the only man left on stage.

- [Eddie] I could do nothing more, I might as well go too.

- He stood there and he did the impossible, trying to calm an audience down in a burning stage.

He became a true hero that afternoon and is remembered to this day for his act of heroism.

(fire roaring) - [Eddie] As I left the stage, another great balloon of flame leapt out into the auditorium and killing scores who had not yet succeeded in escaping from the gallery.

- [Narrator] Through thick smoke, Eddie groped his way along the wall until he reached the Dearborn Street stage door.

- [Eddie] I could think of nothing but my boy.

I became more and more frightened.

As I neared the street, I was certain he hadn't gotten out.

- [Narrator] Inside, the inferno continued to rage.

- Horrific.

Horrific is the word that describes it.

People described it as like something out of hell, it was just unbelievable.

- [Narrator] Viva Jackson was among those still stuck inside.

- They think what might have happened was she was asphyxiated and may have gotten trampled.

(somber music) - [Narrator] The fire had swept through the theater in less than 20 minutes.

- When the firefighters finally were able to get into the theater, they say that it was a very eerie silence because as they called out to see if there were any survivors, you always hope to hear a voice calling back to you.

It was silent.

No one responded to them.

- One of the fire officials scouring through the balcony said, "Is anybody alive here?

Answer me.

Call out and we'll get you out."

And he was met with silence.

He said, "Christ have mercy."

- As a firefighter, we try to keep our emotions in check and sometimes, especially when children are involved, it becomes difficult.

- And firemen carried out a lot of bodies and laid them on the street in front of the entrance to the theater.

Body, body, body lying in the slush till they could be carried away to these vehicles, these ambulances.

They were horrified by what they saw, many of them wept.

They had children at home.

They were moved by what they saw.

I was moved by one of the accounts that I read.

Rough story.

Excuse me.

(somber music) - [Narrator] Outside, families frantically searched for their loved ones.

Eddie Foy was one of the lucky ones.

- [Eddie] I looked around wildly and there was Brian with his faithful friend.

I seized him into my arms and turned for the hotel.

- [Narrator] After looking for hours, James Jackson eventually found his daughter Viva's body at the morgue.

- After a search of over 20 hours, brother James found all that was left of his beautiful young daughter in Horan's Morgue.

From the condition of the body- - [Viva's Relative] it is thought her death was quick, and comparatively painless, and due to suffocation.

There is no exaggerating the horrors of that fire.

It is beyond the power of tongue or pen.

Viva Rose, named after our mother, was beautiful in face and character, talented in so many ways- - And her life was opening out so full of promise.

It is a terrible blow to James and wife.

When I read that, I feel a pretty big sense of loss.

I wonder what would've happened if Viva survived, how that would have affected my grandfather and his family.

- [Narrator] In the morning, President Theodore Roosevelt wired a telegram to Chicago's Mayor, Carter Harrison, relaying the nation's sorrow.

- The next day was New Year's Eve, and Chicago, which was known as a kind of a rowdy town, was very somber.

The city was in mourning and in shock, in deep shock.

- [Narrator] The front page of the Daily Tribune listed the victims names.

Most of them, women and children.

Though the official death count was 602, many believed the number was higher.

It remains the deadliest building fire in US history.

- The front page cartoons told a story of how the city felt.

They were angry, people were angry and up in arms.

- [Narrator] Iroquois owner, Will J. Davis, and his partner were quick to deflect blame.

- The owners blamed the audience for being responsible.

If they had listened to Eddie Foy and his request that they remain in their seats, they would have lived through the disaster.

But they didn't, and therefore they died and it was their fault.

- [Narrator] An inquest by the coroner revealed that shortly before the Iroquois opened, a fire captain had inspected the theater and he was appalled by what he didn't see.

- He noticed the absence of many of the fire protection aids that were supposed to be on the walls.

There was no firefighting equipment with the exception of these wooden battens and a chemical substance called Kyl Fire.

- [Narrator] But when the captain reported his findings to his battalion chief, he offered a striking response.

- It was none of his business, he knew that the absence of this fire apparatus but it wasn't his decision to make.

And the owners of the theater knew about this and they went ahead and opened it anyway.

- [Narrator] On February 23rd, a grand jury returned an indictment against Iroquois owner, Will J. Davis, and four others for manslaughter.

Davis spoke to the press again.

- No human agency could have prevented the theater catastrophe.

The building had been thoroughly examined and approved in writing by city authorities before the theater opened, and we could do no more.

Why should we be charged with murder because the audience stampeded and the ushers lost their reason?

I am asking no sympathy, but God knows I have suffered enough and I should be let alone.

- [Narrator] More than three and a half years after the fire, the long awaited trial got underway.

- This court is now in session.

- [Lawyer] Prove to you that Mr. Davis- - [Narrator] Of the 200 witnesses the state planned to call, the first was Maude Jackson, the mother of Viva Jackson.

- Don't worry.

- Thank you.

- It seemed like they were going to lean on her fairly heavily as a witness.

She also helped to chaperone the girls that were going to be witnesses at the trial.

- Yes, Viva.

- But she never had a chance.

- [Narrator] Four questions into Mrs. Jackson's testimony, Will J. Davis' attorney interrupted and made a shocking claim.

(judge gravel banging) - [Judge] Order in the court.

Order.

- [Narrator] The very fire ordinances on which the manslaughter charges were based, were not valid.

He argued the city safety codes went beyond those allowed by the state of Illinois and therefore, the city had no jurisdiction to enforce them.

- And this is all representative of larger problems in the United States at this time period, because municipal governments either couldn't or chose not to exercise the proper authority in holding building owners accountable for creating safe buildings.

- [Narrator] Presiding judge, E.R.E.

Kimbrough, ruled that the ordinances were in fact, invalid.

He directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.

- [Will J. Davis] Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

- Obviously, Maude was disappointed with the outcome that, morally speaking, the owner of the theater was completely in the wrong.

- [Narrator] Having been robbed of the opportunity to speak in court, Maude Jackson now issued a statement to the press.

- I feel that the deficiency in the law in no way releases Mr. Davis from the moral responsibility of the death of our 600 loved ones.

It is time the public should be protected.

- The fact that no one was prosecuted was a gross miscarriage of justice, in my opinion.

It shouldn't have happened.

And what more can be said, except that lessons are learned so that we can avoid future accidents like this.

- [Narrator] As news of the verdict swept the nation, American cities took a closer look at their own safety ordinances.

- Because it happened to women and children and upper and middle-class children and women, it really captivated people around the nation and around the world.

And also because it happened during a time with photography and newspaper coverage, it really did make people all around the world stop and think about, is my local theater safe?

And could this happen to me?

- [Narrator] The Chicago Fire Underwriters Association, now known as UL, helped investigate the Iroquois' missing safety features.

- The Iroquois Theater played an important part in shaping and developing our mission.

So we could study, for example, why were the fire extinguishers not operating properly?

This led to our label service and actually putting labels on devices that we tested, so that a consumer or a construction official could pick up a device and know, okay, this has been tested and it's going to actually keep us safe.

- [Narrator] Another safety measure adopted after the fire, exit lights, which would stay illuminated in the event a theater lost power.

And one of the most important life saving devices, the crash bar.

- Because of the tragedy, they made code changes so that all theaters had to have outward swinging doors.

And eventually, the hardware had to be changed to what we know now as panic hardware.

Just that bar that we push in order to exit a door so that everybody can safely exit the building rather than be trapped behind it like they were on that day.

(people screaming in panic) - It's still bewildering to understand how this series of misadventures could happen.

I use misadventure advisedly.

People were taking a bet that no fire would break out.

People hadn't completed their jobs, their tasks.

People had allowed a theater that was grossly inadequate to open.

- Well, it's interesting to think about Chicago learning lessons from fires still, right?

In 1903, almost 30 years after the great Chicago fire.

But I think that this is a lesson that generation over generation has to learn, and we have to learn it in Chicago specifically.

We know from the Our Lady of the Angels fire, the county building fire, there have been many fires since that have also surprised us and made us wonder how it could happen again.

- [Narrator] Up next.

(water gushing) - A disaster lurking 40 feet below downtown.

(crowd bustling) (fire engine honking) - It was looking like a slow news day.

Radio reporter, Larry Langford, was near the end of his overnight shift on April 13th, 1992.

- Nothing was going on.

It was dead.

No shootings, no fires to report.

- [Narrator] Shortly after sunrise, Larry heard about flooding at Marshall Fields on State Street.

- I took some note of it but that's not a news story in itself, it could be a bad pipe in the basement.

But a few minutes later, another store reported water in the basement on State Street.

I still wasn't really concerned but then, a store off State Street, police were getting calls of water in the basement.

- I got a call from our security around six o'clock in the morning saying that there was a few inches of water in our boiler room.

And so, the assumption at that point, it was some sort of water main break in the building.

- [Narrator] As the water department got word of a spreading flood, they also assumed it was just a water main break.

- They sent one crew over to LaSalle Street and I went over there and met them.

I said, guys, what are you doing?

And they said, we're shutting down a 42 inch main.

- [Narrator] But reports of flooded basements kept coming in from across the Loop.

- Now there's a couple of feet and our boiler room's at 20,000 square feet, so that made me think there's something more going on here than just some sort of water main break.

- [Narrator] Larry's slow news day was about to go into overdrive.

- I started looking for the private security frequencies to punch in, to listen to the building people themselves.

I got the Merchandise Mart, and that's when I hit the jackpot.

People were having a discussion about the water coming in the basement.

One guy says, "Hey man, there's fish in this water!"

And I'm listening to that, I'm going, fish in the water?

That's no City of Chicago water main leak.

We've got a big story here.

- [Narrator] Larry drove to the Kinzie Street Bridge, northwest of the Merchandise Mart.

What he saw there stopped him dead in his tracks.

- What I saw then is a site that I will never forget as long as I live.

It looked like the biggest bath tub drain in the world.

Water was swirling around about 13, 14 feet wide and there was debris in the middle of this whirlpool.

I ran back to the car, got on two-way radio and said, put me on the air, put me on the air.

They go, what do you got?

Don't worry about it, put me on the air.

And I said, the stories we've been hearing about water in some of the basements downtown, I may have discovered the source of the leak.

I'm looking at a giant whirlpool by the Kinzie Street Bridge.

Somebody should wake up the mayor.

- [Narrator] Over at City Hall, they scrambled to make sense of it all.

- There were a lot more people than usual in the City Hall press room.

Everyone was just buzzing with, what is going on?

I remember I kept asking my news director, you mean the river is flooding its banks?

How is that possible?

And he said, no, it's flooding underground.

And again, I was like, how is that possible?

- [Narrator] Chicago's resident transit historian had a hunch.

Listening to the news from his desk at the Merchandise Mart, Bruce Moffat pieced together the clues.

- I thought instantly, it's gotta be the freight tunnel.

All these buildings had one thing in common, they were connected to the freight tunnels.

- I think the freight tunnel system in Chicago is sort of a surprise to most people.

The freight tunnel system was originally designed as a way to bring telephone wires to downtown buildings, so this is early 20th century.

And so, a small company decides to build this tunnel system.

And they started as Illinois Telephone and Telegraph, and they did build a telephone system.

- [Narrator] But the company had another plan, it secretly built tunnels big enough to operate a small railroad.

- One of the things you have to remember about Chicago at the turn of the 20th century was that it was one of the fastest growing cities on earth and as a result of that, it was congested.

- The reason for freight underground was simply to avoid downtown Loop congestion.

- [Narrator] While Illinois Telephone and Telegraph did have a license to install wires down there, it did not have permission to build a railroad.

- The aldermen, the mayor, were shocked that this was going on.

I think the aldermen were more shocked that they were missing out on a revenue-generating opportunity for themselves.

- [Narrator] There were allegations the company gave 21 aldermen $110,000 in the back of a bar.

And in 1906, Chicago's freight tunnel system opened for business.

Sitting 40 feet below the Loop, it was the first of its kind in the world.

- It was considered an engineering marvel.

It ultimately would make it to about 62 miles of tunnel.

It was under every street downtown and a bit beyond.

The freight tunnels were used specifically for bringing in coal for heating and hot water, removal of ash and for package express.

- [Narrator] But by the late 1920s, the tunnels started losing their competitive advantage.

- Part of the reason was the advent of the motor truck and their ability to handle larger loads and go greater distances.

- [Narrator] By 1959, the freight tunnels were closed and largely forgotten.

- They did some minimal inspections.

But it was really, out of sight, out of mind, it has no impact on day-to-day life until things get disrupted.

- [Narrator] The tunnels had most certainly been disrupted.

There was a hole in the tunnel wall under Kinzie Street Bridge at the bottom of the river.

(fire engine honking) - City crews and first responders raced to the scene.

Over at Marshall Fields, it's sub-basements were now underwater and its famous clock frozen at the time it lost power.

At the county building, workers scrambled to rescue deeds and records, some dating back to the 1800s.

In other basements, the flooding created dangerous conditions.

- Well, at the time, because there was all this equipment that's obviously connected to electrical power, so there was that concern.

- [Narrator] And fears were mounting about even more serious devastation.

- Everyone's speculating, well, with all this water in the foundations, when it goes out, probably this building's gonna fall?

Are we gonna have crumbling foundations or is something going to collapse?

And so, it was scary.

- [Narrator] City officials moved swiftly.

They ordered the evacuation of 250,000 people from the downtown area.

- They had just gotten in, put down their bags and then their bosses told them, we have to shut down the power.

- Everything is down.

The phones are down, they're shutting all the computers off, everything is off.

- [Narrator] The evacuation included the Board of Trade and the Mercantile Exchange, causing ripple effects in financial markets across the globe.

- You had these two major engines of America's business shut down because they couldn't turn the power on.

- [Narrator] Without power, the CTA was forced to halt subway service, leaving commuters stranded.

- I've been standing here probably over half an hour, we're trying to get a short distance home.

- It was a beautiful spring day and I'll never forget this visual of just thousands and thousands of people walking across the Franklin Bridge, going north, because they had no other way to get out of the Loop.

People got a free day off from work.

It's like a snow day, in a way.

In the spring.

- [Narrator] For most people, the flood was still a mystery.

- People were like, what flood?

'Cause you couldn't see anything.

At street level, everything was fine.

- [Narrator] At Kinzie Street, Mayor Richard M. Daley had arrived at the scene of the damaged tunnel.

- By then, at Kinzie Street Bridge was already almost like a crime scene.

There was tape up, there were fire boats in the river.

- [Policeman] Come on, guys, let's go.

Back it up.

- [Narrator] One year until his first full term, this was the mayor's first major crisis.

- He had a news conference over there and he was definitely concerned.

He had his engineers with him.

- [Reporter] Mayor Daley, how did this start?

- We don't know yet.

We don't know yet.

- [Reporter] How did this start?

- It was broken.

We don't know yet.

We don't know, we don't know yet.

No.

- [Reporter] Was there a city crew working on this?

- No, it wasn't.

- [Reporter] There was no city crew.

- He didn't have much in the way of answers.

The city was sending its experts in but they just didn't know what to do at that point.

- [Reporter] Has it slowed at all, going into the ocean?

- Some of it is, yes.

We're putting sandbags, we're gonna put mattresses, we're gonna put everything possible.

- [Narrator] One possible solution was an old Navy trick.

- There's the controversy of whether they put mattresses in there or not.

There was some talk that the mattresses would expand and seal the hole, which was kind of laughable now.

- Since I've been working in tunnels, you know, it's over 20 years- - [Narrator] Instead, Mayor Daley would enlist the help of one of Chicago's foremost experts on tunnels.

Kenny Construction had helped build the city's first subway station at Clark and Division Streets, and the first deep tunnel project.

Now, the Mayor asked John Kenny if he was up for the job.

- He said, do you want to do this?

And I said, absolutely.

And he said, any questions?

I said, yeah, I don't want any red tape on anything.

I want to be able to do what I have to do and do it now.

As long as you agree with it, it's my decision to do it, and safety trumps everything, so the safety of the city and all the people working.

And he said, all right, go to work.

And immediately I said, you see your barges across there?

You need to get some big, heavy stone right now on those barges, because we need to get that stone down into the freight tunnel.

- And they started to take the stone off the barge and put it right into the area where the swirl was happening.

Anything that they could do to choke off the flow of water.

- [Narrator] But it didn't work.

- The large rocks weren't big enough, not chunky enough, if you will, because so much water was flowing so fast from the river into the hole in the freight tunnel.

- [Narrator] Next, they brought in bigger pieces of concrete.

- 50 semi-trucks full of concrete rubble, they were all there, and then we started dumping some of the concrete chunks into the swirl.

That didn't stop it either.

- [Narrator] It was the start of what would be several days of trial and error.

- A lot of people said, no, we should do this, this and this, and I said, we have to do what we know how to do.

- The water people to construct- - [Narrator] At City Hall, Mayor Daley issued an update.

(reporters cross talking) - Well, they're doing everything possible at this time.

(reporters cross talking) - Well, whether it's cement, whether it's concrete, anything possible to stop the flow of water into the system.

- His behavior during this kind of toggled between mumbling and being a little bit reserved.

I think because he didn't wanna say something he shouldn't.

- [Reporter] Have you heard anything with regard to though that leak being noticed previously, by anybody other than the city?

- Well, not as yet, in a sense that there was some problem with it, the construction was over six months ago.

But at this time, we're gonna stop the water from flowing.

That's what we're doing.

We are not gonna get into who is to blame because we don't know as yet, that's why.

That's why.

This is a very serious problem, don't make it funny.

- [Reporter] I'm not making it funny.

- Yes you are.

- You could tell he was so either confuzzled, or annoyed, or just pissed.

He was just trying not to blow up in front of us.

It was kind of entertaining.

- You cannot just answer any of these questions so flippantly, you have to look at the experts and the professionals involved.

(reporters cross talking) - Thank you very much.

Thank you.

- [Narrator] As Mayor Daley's point person, John Kenny was thrust in front of the cameras.

- He basically said, John, step up and take over.

And I'm like, whoa, I've never done this before.

Good afternoon.

Presently on the Kinzie East Location- And then I had four press conferences a day, every day for two weeks after that.

- Joining me now is John Kenny who is Vice-President of the Kenny Construction Company.

- There was a lot going on but somehow, Kenny managed to explain things so calmly and so clearly.

- I emphasize the word temporary, they're very temporary plugs.

When we put in a permanent plug, it will be a permanent plug.

- Even when they were having to retrench and try something new, he was explaining it in a way that most people could understand.

- We think we've accomplished quite a bit, we slowed the water down quite a bit.

- In a crisis like that, a competent, cool guy is gonna end up being kind of a star.

- [Narrator] The press became so enamored with Kenny, they gave him a nickname.

- It sort of became this running thing where John Kenny was the Flood Stud.

I don't think he would say that he was particularly studley.

- That was comical, and everybody got a big laugh but that stuck with me for, well, these 30 years, it still is, people still call me that.

- [Narrator] Newspapers even reported on his wardrobe.

- Oh yeah, he had the teal jacket.

I mean, at some point you're just waiting for the leak to stop, you gotta have something to fill, I guess.

- Monday, April 13th, 1992, will long be remembered by Chicagoans as the day of the great Loop underground flood.

- [Narrator] By nightfall, the city had expanded the area of evacuation and much of the Loop had plunged into darkness.

Crews worked around the clock pumping water from soggy basements.

- The place was deserted and it was so spooky.

There were hoses coming out of manholes because they're trying to pump out the water.

It was really dystopian.

- [Narrator] On day two, river water was still flowing into Loop basements through the tunnels.

John Kenny had worked through the night trying to plug the hole with concrete, but his efforts were hampered by all of that pumping.

As building owners sucked water from their basements, they also sucked more water into the tunnel.

- We pumped a lot of concrete into the swirl.

It started to make a difference, but with the building owners all pumping, it broke through again.

- [Narrator] As John Kenny and his team continued working on a plan, Mayor Daley delivered an update on the flood, and it was a bombshell.

- In mid-January, some people from the Chicago cable TV who were in the tunnel in the area, discovered damage in the tunnel wall.

The damage area was approximately 20 feet long and six feet high.

- [Narrator] The city had known about the damaged tunnel for months.

Now, Daley showed video evidence.

- [Cable Company Worker] This is not a cave-in, it appears to be a piling of some sort.

There's something right next to the tunnel.

I count probably three deep and three across.

- These guys from the cable company had noticed not only that there was water coming in, and mud, and debris, they noticed wooden pilings breaking through and they took the video of it in January.

And it wasn't until April that we all saw this.

So yeah, it was a bombshell.

- What we have learned so far in our preliminary, underlying preliminary interviews- - [Narrator] Daley revealed that a year earlier the city had hired contractors to replace wood pilings at five bridges, including Kinzie Street.

- What the pilings do is they essentially keep boats from banging into the structure of the bridge.

They're made of wood and they're in the water, and so they wear out and they needed to be replaced.

- [Narrator] The contractors were worried about damaging the bridge tender's house, so they asked the city's permission to move the new pilings.

The city project manager gave his okay.

- Unfortunately, before giving that permission, the person did not check, if you move these pilings, is there some interference?

- [Narrator] It was just enough of a shift, about one foot, that when they drove a piling into the river bottom, it cracked the freight tunnel.

- [Dennis Rodkin] The imponderable thing about this at the time was, somebody poked a hole underneath the river and the river is flowing out below ground.

Nobody ever would have imagined it.

- [Narrator] After the work was completed, an engineer was sent to inspect the new pilings at each of the five bridges.

- Accordingly to what we have learned, he approved the work at all five bridges based on an inspection of only one of the sites, the Cermak Bridge site.

When asked why he did not inspect the other four bridge sites, he told us it was because there was nowhere to park at those other sites.

- The guy couldn't find a parking spot.

I mean, it's hard to find a spot downtown.

- City electricians come down.

- [Narrator] City engineer, James McTigue, learned of the cracked wall two months before the flood and even took pictures to show his superior, but it took a week to develop the photos at Osco.

- McTigue started it up the chain of command, he told his boss who told his boss.

The problem seems to be that that second level boss really, though he said I'll take care of it, didn't take care of it.

- [Narrator] 12 days before the flood, McTigue and his colleagues met to decide if city workers could fix the problem.

- Maybe a city department can brick up the hole in this tunnel, it looks as if it'll cost about $10,000 to do.

- [Narrator] The transportation department got three bids on repairs, all of them around $75,000, but Commissioner John LaPlante wanted more estimates.

Two were scheduled for April 14th.

It would be one day too late.

On the morning of April 13th, the crack gave way to a hole the size of a car, and the trickle turned into a torrent.

- This was a problem that didn't need to be a problem, so now the press is looking, who do we go after?

- This morning, I have requested and received the resignation of Acting Transportation Commissioner, John LaPlante.

- It does appear that Daley needed to show people, I'm firing somebody, and here's the guy I'm firing.

- [Narrator] Back at the Kinzie Street Bridge, John Kenny had now been dumping concrete into the hole for more than a day.

He had been successful in slowing the flow of water.

- Now the trick was, how do we stop the water?

Being a tunnel contractor, we knew that we'd have to access the tunnel and the only way to do that was shafts.

We knew we had to drill down and then to seal it with concrete.

- Behind me, workers are drilling caissons, it's the equivalent of big holes, and through them eventually, later tonight, they hope to lower divers in, they have 14 divers and they're gonna slowly begin lowering them in cages down these caissons into the tunnel, and inside these cages will be sandbags, and these divers, with their hands, will slowly begin to fill the hole in the tunnel with the help of these sandbags.

But, John Kenny from the Kenny Construction Company said at the Daley news conference this afternoon that this is potentially a very dangerous task because the divers can't see anything in the water and they don't know what the flow of the water is like, what the tide is like down there, so they're gonna proceed very slowly.

Could you see anything down there?

- [Jim Samoska] No.

No, it's all strictly by feel.

- [Reporter] So it's pitch black, and how are you- are you crawling?

- Basically, you're on your hands and knees crawling around just like a baby on the floor, trying to learn and discover new things.

- [Reporter] In the pitch dark?

- In the pitch dark.

- [Reporter] And was there much water around you at that point?

- [Jim] The water depth at that point was approximately 36 feet.

- The divers were used specifically to go down and inspect everything, and when we were ready to pour concrete, we just poured the concrete down a tremie pipe and it basically sealed everything off.

- [Narrator] On Sunday, seven days after the flood began, the concrete plugs were in place.

The flooding had finally stopped.

- It was like watching a disaster movie in the last scene when everybody's all happy.

- Today, I'm very pleased to report that the tunnel appears to have been plugged on both sides of the leak and hopefully, we can now turn our attention to the process of draining the water from the system.

- At the end, obviously I was exhausted from the whole thing, but you're not exhausted because you know you've accomplished something, you've helped people.

- [Narrator] Now, the city and building owners began the messy, smelly work of cleaning up.

- It took several weeks to clear out the flooded damage from those sub-basements like the big department stores, the county building and its records.

You don't think about what's going on in these sub-basements, but it really does cause so much damage.

- [Narrator] To prevent another flood, the city sealed off the tunnels with two and a half inch thick steel waterproof doors.

- The easiest way to explain it is like a submarine door.

Once it closed and locked, it was sealed and water was not getting in there.

- The Army Corps of engineers pumped 134 million gallons of water out of city basements.

President George H. W. Bush declared Chicago's Loop a federal disaster area.

- I remember Dan Quayle coming and looking around the Kinzie Street Bridge and saying yes, there it is.

There is the leak.

- [Narrator] The city would need the disaster relief funds.

The flood cost almost $2 billion in damage.

It was a hefty price tag for a catastrophe that could have been prevented.

- So you've got a repair job that first, the city employees think they can do for $10,000, then you get bids from outside companies saying they can do it for 75,000.

That's pretty unfortunate that you didn't take one of those $75,000 bids.

- This was just an odd crisis.

Mayor Daley said that it was a sign of the nation's crumbling infrastructure, but that's not really what this was.

It's the sort of combination of organizational misunderstandings, and mopes, and fall guys.

It's not like this hurt Daley politically, he won reelection in 1995 with 60% of the vote.

So, I don't know if we learned anything from this.

Did they learn to not let small problems become big problems?

I don't know.

(melodious music)