The Great Flood of Albany Park

Some reflections on my "natural disaster" experience of the past few days.

I live in Chicago by all accounts an extremely diverse (although usually pretty segregated)city....in a wonderful neighborhood called Albany Park. Albany Park is an interesting neighborhood because of its incredible diversity. It is a port of entry for immigrants (both recent and not so recent) from all over the world. There are literally dozens of native languages spoken at the local high school. Within 5 blocks of my house I can go to 2 Koren restaurants, a half dozen Mexican restaurants, a Filipino restaurant, 6 middle eastern restaurants, 4 Chinese restaurants and a rib shack. The North branch of the Chicago river flows through the neighborhood and right next to my building. Usually it is just a slightly scenic trickle when it passes under my balcony but after 3 days of continuous rain the river was approaching a roaring rapid.

However, I never dreamed there would be a flood of minor biblical proportions in my neighborhood. Saturday afternoon around 4pm...there was about an inch of water in the storage area in the basement of the building....I figured hey my stuff is all in plastic tubs...it should be fine. Of course a mere 4 hrs later when I returned from dinner I returned to a LAKE. Water was knee deep in my front yard, a little more shallow in my back yard....and the area where my storage locker is (and unfortunately the lower level my neighbor's duplex) had about 5 feet of water. After debating (read...fighting) with Chicago's finest to actually get access to my street (which I still had to break at least 3 major traffic laws to do)...I got the lovely opportunity to wade through the water and climb the 3 flights (you will never again hear me complain about living on the 3rd floor) to my very dry home. Of course it was still raining. I went to bed thinking everything would be better in the am...WRONG! Apparently it rained ALL NIGHT! which just made things worse the next day. Eventually the worsening flood waters and rain caused the city (via the lovely reverse 911 call I received and them shutting off gas and electric) to force evacuation of the area. While it made for a sort of crazy day yesterday...I can't really complain. I was safe, everyone in my building was okay and my car avoided any water damage. The craziest thing that happened while I was out in the rain (thinking about building an ark and searching for two of every animal) was that I actually saw several fish swim by me as I was walking in the alley (yes...REAL LIVE fish who knows where they were going)...after I stopped screaming because I thought it was a rat I realized that was pretty cool.

What I was most impressed with in this crazy divisive, cynical world was that my mixed up diverse neighborhood of ethnic whites, Africans (from all parts of the diaspora), Latinos (from Mexico, the Caribbean, central and South America), Asians (from every possible country), Christians, Muslims and Jews had a spirit of helpfulness, togetherness and neighborhood spirit that transcended all the divisions apparent to the naked eye. People stayed up until all hours helping neighbors sandbag, everywhere I went people asked if I was okay and a really nice guy helped me carry things to my car.

Even though the situation was a little bleak...people worked together. People didn't focus on their differences...just on their common goals. It is my hope that we can all learn this lesson from the great flood of Albany park! :-)