Today’s Buzzyblog Twofer Tuesday takes a look at Chicago’s Kinzie Street Bridge where two infamous incidents have occurred.
The first incident occurred in 1992 when a construction crew was tasked with replacing the bridge’s pilings. They ran into some concerns with removing the old pilings and instead decided to install new ones. As they did so however, they placed one piling too close to an old, unused tunnel. The piling pressured the tunnel’s exterior wall enough such that water began to leak into it. Eventually a small leak became a big leak and next thing you know all of downtown Chicago was flooded.
I found this video discussing it:
The “Number 2” incident (pun intended) occurred 20 years ago on 7 August when a Dave Matthews tour bus unloaded its holding tank through a Kinzie Street Bridge grate onto a boatload of tourists. The following video relates that story. (Note that the plaque shown at the 1:10 mark is not there anymore. Brady and I spent some time searching around the bridge for it but never found it. I’ve included below a still photo I nicked from the video.)
Here is the plaque that used to be attached to the bridge.
Gotta play some DMB after all that crap. One of my favorite tunes from them follows.