Harvey vs Maria? Natural disaster spread thruout southwest, Caribbean

One reason I’ve heard given as to why everybody is supposed to be rooting for the Houston Astros to win the World Series this week is because of the devastation caused this summer by Hurricane Harvey.

The Clemente Award for charitable works

After all, the people of Houston need a moral victory of sorts to boost their spirits following the devastation spread across the Texas city.

NOT THAT I’M badmouthing Houston in any way. I’m sure there might be a few people who would think in such terms – as though seeing the Astros finally win a World Series for the first time in their 55^th year of existence might make up for any losses they suffered due to the storm’s devastation.

But I can’t help but think that such logic trivializes what happened with Harvey (the hurricane, not the one-time All Star Harvey Kuenn). As though Houston is now fully recovered just because they got a World Series victory – and will be able to stage a massive parade through the city as a result.

All of this may well be the reason why the most intriguing moment of the World Series activity that took place last week and this has to do with Anthony Rizzo of the Chicago Cubs receiving the Clemente Award from Major League Baseball.

The award named for the late Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente is presented every year during the World Series to the ballplayer who engages in charitable work aside from his ballplaying activities.

Clemente made ultimate contribution

IN RIZZO’S CASE, he operates a foundation meant to support groups that address the issue of children who suffer from cancer. Last year, his group helped provide some $4 million to fund the Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.

A nice cause. But what does any of that have to do with the World Series or Houston?

It’s that Rizzo received a $25,000 prize for receiving the Clemente Award, and Rizzo immediately donated that money to relief efforts meant to help the people of Puerto Rico – who suffered devastation also this summer from Hurricane Maria.

Which has caused so much devastation and has such a messed-up relief effort that there are large swaths of the island commonwealth remaining without electricity or running water – even though the hurricane struck a couple of months ago.

Clemente replacement a star in own right

I’M NOT SAYING I expect Puerto Rico to be back up and running at full efficiency this quickly. No more than it shouldn’t be surprising there are still signs of Harvey damage in Houston.

But for all the people who try to diminish the significance of what is occurring in Puerto Rico these days for their own cheap political advantage (I’m looking directly at President Donald J. Trump when I make this statement), it’s nice to see someone bring up the relief effort at a time when certain elements would rather focus attention on Houston.

Particularly in a way that really doesn’t do a thing to benefit that city or its people. Like the cliché goes, talk is cheap. These people don’t want to kick in with cash that could help the efforts to rebuild the damage caused by so many storms that struck this summer – Mother Nature really was in a foul mood during 2017!

And yes, Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth – giving our federal government just as much responsibility for overseeing a rebuild there as it has for any rebuild done on the U.S. mainland.

Would you really rather think of Yuli and Yu ...

THE FACT THAT Rizzo would bring up the Puerto Rico relief effort as part of an official World Series-related activity is a plus – particularly since it reminds us all of Clemente – the ballplayer who in his final game of 1972 got his 3,000^th base hit. Only to be killed in a crash months later when he tried to try an overloaded airplane with supplies as part of the relief of an earthquake that struck Nicaragua.

An event that I’m sure would be long-forgotten amongst many of us if it hadn’t have cost the Pirates a star ballplayer – got to get our “priorities” right. Is Puerto Rico worth less to many of us because San Juan (the capital) hasn’t been deemed worthy of a U.S. major league ball club?

... when remembering the 2017 World Series?

Thinking of Rizzo is certainly more interesting than much of the World Series activity – unless you’re the type who wants to use the taint of controversy over Yuli Gurriel’s “slant-eyed” mocking gesture to pitcher Yu Darvish to somehow downplay slurs expressed in this country.

I have heard some say that since Gurriel is Cuban and Darvish is from Japan, we should realize that such attitudes are universal, and that the five-game suspension Gurriel will get next season is unfair. Just like they probably think it unfair that Rizzo’s gesture drew attention away from Houston hurricane devastation and toward Puerto Rico.

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Chicago fortunate when it comes to coping with wrath of God-type acts

Those of us paying attention to weather reports in recent weeks have noticed the hurricanes that wrecked their wrath on Texas and now are taking aim on much of Florida. Those with a broader vision will see that those hurricanes also hit Cuba and Puerto Rico, along with the earthquake that has killed dozens in Mexico.

Many a Chicago schoolchild has seen this diorama depiction at the Chicago History Museum of the greatest disaster to impact our city -- the Great Fire of 1871. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

All of which makes me feel fortunate these days to be in Chicago.

A LAND WHERE we don’t get hurricanes and the possibility of being impacted by an earthquake would be a geological anomaly of historic proportions.

We in the Midwest, of course, always face the possibility of tornadoes causing death and destruction. Yet we in Chicago have only 13 tornadoes known to touchdown within the city limits during its not-quite-two-century history.

And only one of those, back on May 6, 1876, hit the area now considered our city’s downtown. Two died and 35 were injured in that incident that damaged the then-Cook County Hospital, along with the Palmer House Hotel.

Coming just five years after the incident that, to this date, is the most significant disaster to impact Chicago – the Great Fire of 1871 – maybe it seemed at that point in time that Chicago was a doomed site.

ONE COULD ARGUE, of course, that the Fire shouldn’t be counted. Is it really a disaster the equivalent of Mother Nature having a hissy fit to have much of the city destroyed by a fire caused by (depending on which account you want to believe) that damned cow kicking over a lamp or some guy named “Peg Leg.”

Besides, we’ve managed to go another 140 years without significant devastation to our city.

We haven’t had a significant tornado touchdown in Chicago since 1967, and that one did most of its damage (33 dead, more than 500 injured) in suburban Oak Lawn – with some damage managing to cross over into the Southwest Side near Midway Airport.

Maybe it's a sign of how fortunate Chicago has been to be spared natural disasters that we can name a shopping center for one of the few structures NOT damaged in the Great Fire

And no, I’m not trying to downplay the tornado that whacked suburban Plainfield back in 1990. That is one of the few disaster-type incidents that I had a hand in covering as a reporter-type person.

BUT THAT ONE lies on the fringe of what could be called the Chicago-area. My point being that we in the city truly have been fortunate. One of the screwiest-type “flood” incidents we had was in 1992 when the Chicago River sprung a leak into the sub-basements that exist beneath downtown buildings.

That one can’t be blamed on nature – that one was pure man-made technical error. Or carelessness, if you prefer to think of it that way.

My point is that in watching these news reports of recent days, I can’t help but feel fortunate about where I live. It’s almost as though I was fortunate enough to be born and raised in one of the safest places in existence – something to keep in mind the next time some political crackpot wants to go off on a rage about the homicide rate of Chicago and exaggerate it into us being the deadliest place on the planet.

It makes me wonder about actress Jennifer Lawrence, who recently made comments about “Mother Nature’s Rage and Wrath” against the people who backed Donald J. Trump for president and who question the legitimacy of “global warming.”

WHICH IS A blatantly absurd thought to have. Although my understanding of the context was that she was trying to mock the individuals who go around thinking of natural disasters as “God’s punishment” against society for tolerating homosexuality.

That is a blatantly ignorant thing to say or think, and is a thought worthy of being mocked.

So what does it say that Mother Nature doesn’t seem to get all that upset about Chicago? Does she love that we don’t try to fool her that often?

Because we all (or at least those of us old enough to remember) know that it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature – even if it’s by passing off Chiffon margarine as real butter!

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Perhaps that’s what they get for living in the most isolated parts of Illinois

The Harrisburg, Ill. tornado of 2012 wasn't severe enough to be a federal disaster.

It may sound so cold to think such a thought. But that seems to be the reality in Harrisburg, a Southern Illinois town of just over 9,200 people.

When a string of tornadoes managed to whisk their way through Missouri and on into Kentucky, Harrisburg was one of the Illinois communities that managed to get hit on Leap Day (a.k.a., Feb. 29).

BECAUSE THERE WASN’T much there to begin with, it didn’t take much for the entire town to be devastated. Plus the fact that everything that happens locally always seems more severe than a major tragedy taking place elsewhere, and you can appreciate how Harrisburg sees their storm of a couple of weeks ago as a major historic event.

They’d like to have the sad saga of tragedy; followed up by the heroic comeback as the people don’t let Mother Nature get them down. They rebuild, possibly to something even more significant than what was there to begin with.

That literally is the tale of Chicago – which could easily have ceased to exist after the great fire of 1871. Instead, it leaped far ahead of other Midwestern towns to become a major world city.

But nothing like that is going to happen in Harrisburg, or surrounding Saline County, Ill. Because in addition to getting walloped by nature, it seems the federal government did a number that will likely keep this town forevermore in the dumps.

BECAUSE IF THEY do choose to rebuild, it’s going to have to be a purely local effort. They’re not about to get much in the way of help from anyone.

Federal officials have ruled that the natural disaster that occurred in Harrisburg wasn’t severe enough to qualify for federal disaster status. There won’t be any federal aid headed for the Southern Illinois community.

A letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to state government said they believe Illinois government is more than capable of providing the finances to help the people of Harrisburg.

“The damage was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments and voluntary agencies,” FEMA officials informed Illinois government.

WHICH MAY BE true on a certain level. There is only so much money to go around, and I’m sure the people of Branson, Mo., will feel relieved that every dollar not being spent in Harrisburg means potentially another dollar that can be spent on rebuilding their community with all those theaters that attract the country music crowd (although for what it’s worth, I have an uncle who lives not far from Branson who claims it’s actually a nice place to visit for a quick show).

But back to Harrisburg, which has been told that even though they had fatalities and there are people who will be left homeless without some assistance to rebuild their residential structures, their suffering just isn’t important enough.

Even though I realize there’s only so much federal money to go around and the devastation may well be worse in Henryville, Ind., or West Liberty, Ky., I’m sure that doesn’t ease the pain of those who suffered within our own state’s boundaries. It certainly didn't make Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., any less disgusted (which was the image I woke up to Monday morning when my television went on to CNN's Headline News and anchor Robin Meade was having her way with the story).

Just like Allstate?

I’m sure we’d be equally ticked off if, somehow, a tornado had managed to clip its way through the extensive suburban area – only to find that someone in Washington thought that Chicago officials were wealthy enough to pay for repairs themselves.

IT’S PART OF why we have a federal government to provide these services. Their actions these days reek of the same stench that we sense whenever an insurance company prefers to look for excuses not to pay a claim – rather than providing the services they’re supposed to for all the years of payments the clients made so they’d be protected on that “rainy day.”

The United States of America, behaving like a face-less insurance company – that is a sad moment for all of us, regardless of where we live.

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Did you spend the weekend in the dark?

As a reporter-type person, I fully appreciate the reason why the big headlines during the weekend related to the severe storm that pushed through the Chicago area Friday night were related to mass transit and the one-time Sears Tower.

The latter structure that for many years was the world’s tallest had some of its windows knocked out by the winds that reached speeds of about 70 miles per hour. That’s a lot of shattered glass on the streets of the south Loop (and around the area, depending on how far the high winds blew it about).

WE SHOULD BE thankful that no one who happened to be in downtown Chicago Friday night was killed or severely maimed by glass shards flying through the air.

There also were the delays in running the Metra commuter trains for people trying to get home during the Friday evening rush hour – which is when that storm that spread across the United States and has now worked its way to the East Coast managed to hit Chicago.

It was an inconvenience experienced by many as crowds trying to get on board delayed trains meant a human backup that must have been unpleasant to experience – particularly on a night when most people were just eager to get home following yet another week of hard work.

Yet I also realize that when most people recall this weekend, they’re not going to think of it as the time that glass flew through the air above the Loop. Nor will they think much about the delay they experienced in getting home Friday night.

IF ANYTHING, THEY’RE going to recall the conditions they found once they got home.

Because those storms managed to play havoc with the electrical power lines, which meant that many people got home to find they had no electricity. Some people had to endure the entire weekend without electricity.

Considering that temperatures also reached the high-80s at times, that meant no air conditioning.

Which means it was a miserable weekend for many.

NOW I HAVE to confess that I was lucky. Where I live, our inconvenience was minimal.

When those winds hit our area at about 4:30 p.m. Friday, they created a situation where electrical power kept fading in and out.

At the time, I was using my laptop computer to try to write a story for someone willing to pay me some money for my work. While my laptop had a battery that immediately kept it going continuously, my electrical “loss” was that the lights kept going on and off, and the device that gives me a wireless connection to the Internet kept starting and stopping.

Which meant that one moment, I had Internet access, while another moment, I did not. I had to wait about a half-hour before I was able to verify a couple of facts I was using to write a story.

I WAS LUCKY in that power never was lost for more than a few seconds, and after about a half-hour it quit misbehaving. I didn’t lose power. Some 555,000 customers of Commonwealth Edison can’t make the same claim

That is more than I can say for many Chicago-area residents, some 64,000 of whom still hadn’t had their electricity restored as of Sunday morning. ComEd officials said the utility company expected most of those to be restored by day’s end.

But there were some people who came home Friday night without electricity, and never got it back. Perhaps they had to leave for work Monday morning, wondering what they would come home to (even though theoretically, they knew it was likely it would be restored by then).

In my case, the closest I personally came to such a case involved my father, who lives in a nearby town but happens to be on a vacation trip with my step-mother. His house lost power at about 5 p.m. Friday and did not get it restored until 11 a.m. Sunday.

HE PICKED THE perfect time to be away from the house, which as far as I can tell did not sustain any other weather-related damage. He will return Monday having to do little more than figure out which items in his refrigerator went bad because of the forty-plus hours it endured without electrical power. Not that everybody in the Chicago area was lucky enough to be on vacation when the storm struck.

For those who couldn’t find a friend or relative to impinge upon, it must have been a primative weekend – on account of how dependent our society has become on having a steady source of electicity to keep us going.

They get my sympathies because I recall the time I experienced a lengthy power outage in my residence. But that was for about 19 hours – most of which was overnight while I slept. I’m sure the sweaty, clammy conditions I woke up in that morning without electricity were nowhere near as bad as what some people experienced this weekend.

Which is why I almost wonder if those stories emphasizing the Willis Tower windows went so far as to trivialize the weekend. It may be a significant building in Chicago (and the United States), but I doubt it had much to do with what most people experienced during the weekend.

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I feel fortunate to have (thus far) avoided tornadoes and other natural disasters

Even before I read the news reports this weekend, I knew that there would be something resembling disaster very near to us. I just didn’t know which Illinois towns would make the datelines.

It turned out to be Streator and Dwight, as serious tornadoes that cut through the Midwestern United States caused severe damage in multiple states besides Illinois.

WHAT GAVE ME my inkling was having the television on late Saturday. I was listening to it more than watching it, but the nasty buzz of the Emergency Broadcast System is not something that can be ignored.

Which is why I happened to hear the warnings with their computer-generated mechanized voice telling literally where tornadoes were being seen, and warning people in those communities to take shelter immediately.

At the particular moment that caught my attention, the tornadoes were headed east near Chebanse, a town on the Will/Kankakee county line right on Interstate 57. My gut reaction upon hearing this was to think, “it’s skipping Chicago.”

Because that point is literally what many people would consider to be the boundary between the Chicago metropolitan area and the rest of Illinois (although I am aware that Kankakee residents to the south are a part of the Chicago broadcast market).

WHICH MEANS THAT by thinking it was skipping by Chicago, I literally breathed a sigh of relief. That doesn’t mean I’m glad we didn’t suffer while people in Dwight did. It means that am fully aware of the fact that I realize a tornado is the great equalizer of the Midwest.

A powerful enough funnel cloud can devastate miles-long stretches of rural land, or take down a city block. It plays no favorites.

As much as some people like to tell tacky jokes about tornadoes that involve mobile home communities, I have always wondered how severe the wreckage and fatalities would be if a funnel cloud were to touch down at the northeast corner of Wacker Drive and Jackson Boulevard (otherwise known as the Willis Tower).

It doesn’t even have to be the tallest bulding in Chicago. Anywhere in “the Loop” would be bad. Depending on what time it would strike, the potential for carnage is significant.

FOR THE RECORD, modern-day downtown Chicago (as in the past century) has never had a tornado touchdown. The last recorded one in the area now considered downtown was on May 6, 1876, with 11 other tornado “touchdowns” taking place since 1870 within what we now regard as the city limits.

Which makes me wonder if we’re overdue. I know, you’d rather I focus on whether the Chicago Blackhawks can win the Stanley Cup Wednesday, or if they’re going to drag this out until week’s end. Somehow, I think those people on the fringes of Chicago now have something much more real to worry about than pro hockey.

It also does not help that I still remember being a reporter-type person writing copy for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago on Aug. 28, 1990 when a tornado with winds exceeding 261 miles per hour struck suburban Plainfield.

It remains the most powerful tornado to ever hit the Chicago area, although the people who live in that Will County community still remember it as the moment when 29 people were suddenly killed – and another 350 injured.

I STILL REMEMBER the wreckage and rubble that suddenly erupted, comparable to what cut across the border between metro Chicago and central Illinois.

It remains to be seen how quickly those communities will be able to rebuild. It may even wind up becoming a positive story in watching how this weekend’s tornado victims are able to rebuild their lives after losing everything (while being thankful for whichever friends and relatives survived uninjured).

But I also will admit there is a difference between my seeing this kind of wreckage firsthand, and actually experiencing it – which is something I have not yet done in my life (and would not mind if I somehow managed to miss out on that experience).

The closest I can recall is back when I was 12 and saw funnel clouds developing in the skies above where I lived then in suburban Lansing. I still recall the feeling of dread while sitting in the basement, wondering at what moment the “destruction” would hit.

I WAS LUCKY. The funnel clouds I saw didn’t touch down anywhere close to where I lived then. I had a fortunate feeling that disaster had somehow skipped by me.

Similar to how I felt late Saturday when I was at the far southern end of Cook County near the Cook/Will border – hearing emergency warnings telling me that just one county away, potential existed for people to suffer.

That is too close for my comfort.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: From the serious to the overly dramatic, this pair of videos help remind us of that day nearly 20 years ago when the Chicago area was hit with its most powerful tornado ever.

EXTRA: Raoul pitches in for Haiti relief

State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, who to the best of my knowledge is the only Chicago politico of Haitian ethnicity, is doing his part to try to bolster the relief efforts in support of Haiti.

Raoul created a website (http://www.raoulrelieffund.org/) this week that tries to make it easier for people who wish to make financial contributions in support of the relief, which is trying to help cope with the earthquake last week and aftershock earlier this week that has left at least 200,000 dead.

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EDITOR'S NOTES: Until now, Kwame Raoul's political claim to fame was that he replaced Barack Obama (http://www.ilga.gov/senate/Senator.asp?MemberID=1496) in the Illinois Senate when the latter went to Washington.

Chicago's Haitian population got a temporary boost this week (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/evacuees-from-haiti-to-arrive-at-ohare-tonight.html), while Gov. Pat Quinn appeared to be trying to get the votes of their relatives who are already living here.

I know I'm not the only Chicagoan who didn't feel the earth move under my feet

This is starting to feel absurd.

The strongest earthquake to hit the Midwestern U.S. in decades, one that was felt across a multi-state region and which has generated at least 22 aftershocks (including two this morning) – and I have yet to feel a thing.

THE FUNNY PART of this is, I’m not alone. A scan through the Internet will encounter many weblogs with entries written by people who feel the need to acknowledge that an earthquake has occurred – even though they have no first-hand stories to tell.

There also are other anecdotes floating around out there about people whose only reaction to hearing the word “earthquake” is to scrunch their face in bewilderment and say, “huh?”

My favorite appeared in the Post-Gazette newspaper of Pittsburgh, where the baseball writer surveyed the Pirates (who happened to be in Chicago at the time to play a series against the Cubs) to get their reactions.

None of the ballplayers felt a thing, with third base coach Tony Beasley confessing that had he felt anything, “I would have thought I was dreaming.”

TOM GORZELANNY, A pitcher for the Pirates, only learned about an earthquake when his wife in Pittsburgh told him about it. “I didn’t feel it,” he told the newspaper.

Now some might argue that ballplayers are just a little too self-absorbed to be credible non-witnesses. That may be true.

But the simple fact is that I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary about my surroundings during the earthquake or any of the aftershocks.

I was in bed asleep when the initial earthquake (5.2 on the Richter scale) hit, and was driving my car en route to pick up my niece at her day care center when the first aftershock hit Friday morning.

SUPPOSEDLY, THERE HAVE been many aftershocks since then all through the weekend, with the most recent ones occurring Monday at 12:40 a.m. (a 4) and supposedly another that took place sometime around 8:15 a.m.

I didn’t feel it. I only know it occurred because I happened to be watching one of the morning news programs on Chicago television when WFLD-TV’s Tammie Souza (in the middle of a weather forecast) said we had just experienced yet another aftershock.

Of course, she confessed to not having felt anything either.

I hate to bring any of this up because it sounds like I’m trying to trivialize the event – which appears to be centered around the Southern Illinois towns of West Salem and Mount Carmel (both of which are in the southeastern part of the state near the Indiana border – about 240 miles from Chicago).

I’D LIKE TO think it is the distance from the epicenter that makes these quakes such a minor event for us.

But I have read the tales of people who were jostled out of their sleep Friday morning (I’d like to think that if the South Side had truly been hit with a tremendous disaster, I also would have been awoken from my sleep) and others who suffered minor property damage.

There’s a website called “Apartment Therapy” that is filled with tales and anecdotes of people allegedly from Chicago who felt the earth shift.

But I have yet to personally meet anyone who can share a personal story (which is the case with a metropolitan area of more than 8 million people – there are very few events that are truly universal to all the people of the Chicago area).

IN FACT, THE closest I can come to having talked to someone who felt any tremors was a conversation with my mother. She was awake at the time of the initial earthquake and felt nothing.

But when she went to a scheduled early morning medical treatment, the earthquake was the talk of the waiting room, as about half of the would-be patients said they felt something, and a couple claimed it was the tremors that woke them from their sleep.

So how big a deal should we be making of this earthquake?

I’m thinking particularly of the news media coverage that has been trying to portray this as an event of historic proportions.

IT IS, FOR the area. The Midwest usually gets one or two (tops) earthquakes of any significance per century. I’d like to think that this event carries us over into the year 2050 (by which time I would be so old I might have a legitimate reason to be oblivious to shaking pavement).

And I realize there is a sense among Chicago-based news gathering organizations that they are supposed to cover the entire Midwest region. But is this truly a story just for Southern Illinois?

While I realize there has been some property damage, I have yet to hear any reports of fatalities (and if anyone does know of deaths, I would appreciate you pointing them out to me).

By continually hyping every single aftershock that very few people felt, are the local television types (and the Chicago Tribune – whose idea of Chicagoland stretches from Detroit to Kansas City) making themselves look silly?

COULD THIS LITERALLY be the one time that the Chicago Sun-Times’ microscopic view of the world (their idea of Chicagoland at times doesn’t even cover all of Cook County, Ill.) saved them from over-hyping an event?

When other newspapers across the Midwest were hyping up the earthquake story like crazy, the Sun-Times gave us the tale of the grandfather who dived into Lake Michigan to save his infant grandson, whose stroller rolled off Belmont Harbor (both grandfather and grandson remained hospitalized Monday).

The earthquake warranted one square inch of space in the lower corner of Page One, and that was only to tell us that a story could be found inside on Page 5. Tony Rezko getting out of jail on $8.5 million bond and the scrapping of the spindle (that tacky bit of “art” consisting of junk cars on a spike that made its way into background shots of that forgettable film “Wayne’s World) also got better play than the earthquake.

The simple fact is that an earthquake of 5.2 is somewhat minor, compared to the land shifts that take place along the West Coast. California experiences such tremors on a regular basis.

WHEN COMBINED WITH the fact that this event did not result in any deaths, I’m sure all this coverage is making the Midwesterners look like a batch of rubes to the California crowd.

It also adds to the cynicism felt by many Chicagoans toward their local businesses that make their money by gathering news. I lost count of the number of times this weekend I heard people dismiss earthquake coverage as yet another example of an irresponsible media trying to make a story out of nothing.

So to the people of Southern Illinois and southeast Indiana who may have to find alternate housing while their earthquake damaged homes are repaired or rebuilt, I sympathize. Don’t take my concern about over-coverage in Chicago as being a lack of concern.

It’s just that I fear too much coverage here will convince the bulk of Chicagoans that nothing really happened, not here nor anywhere else. The end result would be that the bulk of Illinois’ population would come to wrongly downplay what has occurred in the land of Little Egypt.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: This young Chicagoan didn’t feel the earthquake (http://chigirlslife.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-didnt-feel-earthquake.html), largely due to imbibing excess quantities of man-made substances.

For those people who want to read stories of Chicagoans who experienced the earthquake, this (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/news/midwest-earthquake-did-you-feel-it-at-home-048402) is as good a place as I can recommend.

Illinois government officials are preparing to swarm into Southern Illinois to assess (http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2008/04/18/front_page/24174951.txt) damage, despite claims (http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2008/04/18/front_page/24173780.txt) there was little lasting effect of Friday’s earthquake.

EXTRA: Earthquake?

Either I am very fortunate, or I am totally oblivious. I didn’t feel a thing.

I was awake until the early hours of Friday, writing copy and otherwise performing the tasks required to publish this site and its sister, The South Chicagoan.

So round about 4:36 a.m., I was asleep, and nothing around me jolted me out of my sleep. I didn’t learn about an earthquake until I awoke at about 7:30 a.m. and (first thing) turned on a television. Robin Meade of CNN Headline got to break the news to me, followed up by reports from Chicago’s WGN and WFLD.

As I look around my apartment, I see no evidence that anything unusual happened – certainly not the most intense earthquake to hit the Midwestern U.S. in decades.

But I don’t doubt that some people felt something. Reports of emergency calls from across Chicago (most just wanting to know what happened) were made to 9-1-1, and the shaking at the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago was so intense (moreso than the swaying that the building usually has due to high winds at 1,000 feet in the air) that officials felt the need to do a morning inspection for structural damage.

Reportedly, they found none.

This earthquake has the potential to unify the Midwest. It was felt in parts of all the states that comprise the old Three Eye League (Illinois, Indiana and Iowa), along with Wisconsin and Michigan, and some tremors were felt as far north as Ontario and as far south as Georgia.

At the very least, it ought to remind Chicagoans that our city is very much a part of the Midwest, and not some isolated island in a sea of corn and soybean fields.

So I am going to consider myself and my fellow Chicagoans lucky that we are not having to cope with a disaster Friday that costs us our livelihoods. My sympathies go out to all those who do, particularly those in Southern Illinois near West Salem (which was the epicenter of the earthquake that registered a 5.2 on the Richter scale).

I’m sure April 18, 2008, will become one of those dates they will never forget.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Here are a few sites to check if one wants serious details about the earthquake or its aftermath:

Chicago Tribune – Downstate earthquake rattles people awake across Chicago area
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-earthquake-webapr19,0,6535454.story

CNN – Midwest earthquake felt far and wide
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/18/illinois.earthquake/index.html

Southern Illinoisan – the major daily newspaper for the earthquake epicenter
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/