Computers and Security, Vol. 11 (1992) 417-420

The Lessons of the Great Chicago Flood of 1992 Belden Menkus Post Office Box 729 Hikboro TN 37342 USA (615) 728-2421

A major flood earlier this year in the midst of a leading U.S.

city has demonstrated several truths about disaster recovery planning. They include:

?? Many of the common activi- ties in a modern urban environ- ment are interrelated and the failure of even one minor process can have far reaching conse- quences. (For example, the op- erations of a data processing facility or networked computing activity may be disrupted signifi- cantly by an incident that does not directly encroach upon it.)

?? Responding to - and recov- ering from - the effects of even an apparently benign event can become a complex and costly process.

?? Even the most finely tuned insurance coverage may prove to be inadequate when one must

deal with the consequences of a disaster.

In what has come to be called The Great Chicago Flood Of 1992, a massive subterranean torrent dis- rupted, for three to 14 days, the operations of numerous financial and retailing organizations in Chicago’s so-called Looy, central business district. The total losses associated with these incidents have been estimated at more than $1.5 billion. Included among the organizations affected by the flooding were at least 30 data cen- tres. Eighteen of these entities ultimately were forced by the flooding to move some part of their computing operations into so-called hot site recovery centres in various parts of the U.S.

What Happened?

Sometime before 5:57 am on April 13 at least 250 million gal- lons ofmurky and highly polluted

Chicago River water began pouring through a break report- edly about the size of large automo- bile in the 3 metre thick concrete wall of one of the subterranean tunnels that interconnect numer- ous buildings in the area. The water, first detected in a sub-base- ment of the massive Merchandise Mart, gradually flooded the base- ments of the affected buildings - in some instances to a depth of almost 14 metres.

The torrent quickly impacted the operations of, among others, the Palmer House Hilton hotel, the Cook County IL Circuit Court, major retailers Carson Pirie Scott and Marshall Field, a segment of the Chicago Transit Authority subway system, and the headquar- ters of two major data processing disaster recovery service provid- ers. In varying degrees, the so- called back ofice activities of five major banks located in the Loop

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also were disrupted. All of these institutions were forced to locate some of their operations to other sites in the Chicago area.

The break reportedly developed as a result of damage inflicted upon the tunnel when the 15 metre wooden pilings that pro- tected the nearby Kinzie Street bridge against possible damage from passing vessels were replaced under a Chicago City contract by Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company. The overall project involved replacing the pilings - known as timber dolphins - on a total offive Chicago bridges. The original plans had called for re- placing the wooden timbers with 15 metre steel tubing. This appar- ently proved to be impractical and 17 metre wooden beams were used instead.

Early signs of the tunnel wall damage had been detected in September 1991. Conditions at the site of the damage had been videotaped on January 14 by a crew installing conduiting for Chicago Cable Television. Re- portedly a 6 metre crack in the tunnel wall was observed at that time. Silt and water allegedly al- ready were flowing through the opening. The site was inspected sometime before March 2 by a Chicago City worker. But, as late as April 10 the Chicago City General Services and Transporta- tion Departments reportedly continued to delay action on re- solving the problem while they attempted to negotiate a pur-

ported $600 difference between their estimate of the cost to repair the damage and the amount ofthe lowest bid received for doing the work.

The ‘Loop’ Tunnel Network

To understand this incident it is necessary to know something about the history of the tunnels under the Loop. The skyscrapers in this 12 block area rest on a stretch of marshland that was cre- ated by the convergence ofa river and a large lake. This tract is situ- ated near the site of the initial Chicago settlement. The area was subject to periodic flooding as early as 1830. During the last half of the 19th century, in an effort to reduce the economic dislocation and disease associated with these incidents, the grade level in this neighborhood was raised several meters. The swampy soil effec- tively was submerged and a hid- den drainage system was installed to keep water out of the area’s streets and building basements. However, at this same time the growth in commercial activity in this area created massive daily traffic jams of horse drawn vehi- cles.

In an attempt to remedy this traf- fic problem, the Illinois Tunnel Company constructed 96.5 kilo- metres of tunnels between 1899 and 1904. These tunnels inter- connected the major buildings in the Loop some 13 metres below the surface of the soft clay soil. This network eventually permit- ted an estimated 5000 delivery

wagons to be removed from the Loop area streets. An electric rail- way system was operated in these tunnels for almost 60 years. This system was comparable to the ones employed at the time in un- derground mining operations. It utilized 117 locomotives - each about the size of a contemporary residential lawn tractor - and 3000 freight cars.

This railway system was used to deliver mail and packages, various types of commercial goods, and soft coal to fuel the various build- ing furnaces. The tunnels were used as well for the removal of ash and waste. And, in the early years of this operation, tunnel air - which remained at a steady 30.5”C year round - was used to provide natural air conditioning to motion picture theaters and other buildings connected to the tunnel network.

Eventually, telephone cable con- duits and pneumatic tubes also were placed in the tunnels. (Pneumatic tube systems were used then to deliver priority busi- ness documents, somewhat in the same manner in which facsimile machines are employed currently. New York, London, and other major urban areas also at one time employed extensive underground pneumatic tube systems for the same purpose.) For about 20 years after the operation of the electric railway was discontinued, the tunnel network largely was ignored. Then, in the early 1980s various telecommunication or-

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ganizations began to install fibre optic cables in the tunnels.

The Consequences Of The Flooding

Within two hours the original flooding occurred, Chicago City officials ordered Commonwealth Edison, the local electric power utility, to begin disconnecting its service to the affected area. This led eventually to the evacuation of an estimated 200 000 people from a total of 200 buildings. Among those impacted by the electric power loss reportedly were the computerized com- modities and futures trading op- erations of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercan- tile Exchange. (The two organi- zations are major participants in the Globex international satellite based trading system. Ironically that system had completed its first successful test a few days before the flooding.) The flood covered the electrical service vault in the Board’s basement with a reported six meters of water and interfered with its trading activities for many days.

During this time operations that might have been carried out by the Board’s traders were redi- rected to London England’s In- ternational Futures Exchange and to a facility operated in Minnea- polis MN by Exchange Re- sources. A one-day flood-related suspension of the operations of the Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Ex- change led to massive single day

declines in U.S. Treasury bond and commodity futures training on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Law Enforcement Adminis- trative Data System network that connects Chicago and suburban police departments with an Illi- nois State computer site in Springfield ceased operations. Chicago City Hall data process- ing was relocated as its basement site was flooded. Water report- edly eventually rose to within 18 inches of the ceiling in that space. The critical end oftax seuson return preparation activities of the Chi- cago offices of various external auditing organizations were dis- rupted by the flooding. Hardest hit was the world headquarters of Arthur Andersen & Co. Flooding of the basement of the building that it occupies destroyed an elec- trical power service vault. In turn, this disrupted a packet switching network used to deliver An- dersen’s North American payroll and to collect time reports, used in billings to its clients. An elec- tric power failure in another building disrupted the operation of Andersen’s mainframe com- puter. Eventually it became nec- essary for Andersen to relocate a 250 user local area network to its international training center in suburban St. Charles, Illinois.

The Role Of Insurance

Several weeks were required to plug the tunnel leak and to drain the water from the basements of the flooded buildings. And, some of the affected organizations re-

ported privately that they had dis- covered that their insurance cov- erage did not cover this incident. Many of them had coverages that were so-called peril sped&-. Thus, for instance, the terms of a par- ticular policy might cover, say, fire or wind damage, but not a loss resulting from a flood. And in other situations, the insurance carrier contended that the event was not a flood in a conventional sense and that whatever business interruption had taken place was not the result of some natural occurrence. These insurers claimed that the disruption stemmed from governmental ac- tion in ordering Commonwealth Edison to stop providing electric power to these buildings and they were not liable for the conse- quences of that action.

Litigation to resolve this issue and other questions of liability for flood-associated damages is ex- pected to extend for some years. Among the issues that probably will have to be resolved in this manner will be the relative re- sponsibility for this incident ofthe City ofchicago Government and the Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company.

The Planning Lessons

Many of the affected entities now have revised their disaster recov- ery plans to provide for the ef- fects of possible damage due to rising water even though Chi- cago normally has not been con- sidered in the past to be a flood plain area.

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Among the issues reportedly be- ing addressed in these revised plans are:

1. Evacuating disabled or handi- capped employees when a build- ing’s elevators are not operating. Organizational efforts to comply with relevant legislation and regulations dealing with facili- tating the access of these people to the workplace rarely con- front the problem of assuring that they can leave safely when an emergency occurs. Even in the most effectively adminis- tered urban setting, there simply may not be sufficient emergency service people available to han- dle this task, without involving the individual’s fellow-employ- ees in the evacuation process. In many instances, on April 13 in Chicago it became necessary for several people to carry a wheel- chair-bound or otherwise im- paired individual down dozens of flights of stairs to the a build- ing’s ground level. Among the concerns that need to be resolved are the possible liability of indi- viduals or an organization for

either injuries to be person being transported or to those involved in transporting this individual.

2. Relocating paper, film, and magnetic records; electric and telecommunication service terminations; and computing activities out of below ground level space. (In many urban centres water main conduiting is extremely old and is demon- strating itself to be prone to major leaks.)

3. Notifying employees who have been sent home because of a dis- aster about when and where they are to return to work when opera- tions are to be restored at another site.

4. Establishing a working rela- tionship with a specialist in clean- ing up the interiors and equipment in flooded or fire damaged buildings. (Fire sites commonly are drenched in water in the course of extinguishing the blaze.) Among the services that should be provided for are air qual- ity monitoring; building water sup-

ply treatment; steam cleaning and vacuuming of furniture, equip- ment, carpeting and drapes; and cleaning and restoration of paper records, magnetic media, electronic equipment, air conditioning and heating equipment, and disk pack and diskette cleaning and restora- tion.

5. Arranging to replace storage batteries and other devices that are damaged as a result of immer- sion in water. For example, a typi- cal water damaged telecom- munication switching device will have to be opened; hand washed and dried; and its solid state com- ponents, fuses, and batteries tested and replaced.

0 1992, Belden Menkus. All Rights Reserved. His copyright extends to all of his materials pub- lished in Computers G Security, in- cluding A High Rise Building Fire Case Study in 11 (19-23), Intvu- duction To Computer Security in 11 (121-127), Concerns in Computer Security in 11 (211-215).

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