When my son started kindergarten in 2001, the group of kids his age starting school was so large our school district had to add three extra sections of kindergarten. This big group has moved through our town’s elementary system wreaking havoc on sectioning now for almost ten years. Each year teachers had to be moved from one grade to another to accommodate this tsunami of learners.
My friend Susan attributes this very specific bump in the number of school-aged kids in our area to the Chicago heat wave and blackout of 1995.
The heat wave / blackout was an amazing event in many ways. It has certainly been hot in Chicago before. But that year it was VERY F***ING HOT. I seem to remember the “heat index” being in triple digits for almost a week. I’m probably wrong about that, but it sure seemed like it was very hot for a long time. We had been experiencing brownouts for some time previous to the blackout, because everyone in the city had their air on simultaneously, and finally a bunch of transformers blew and the power went out. We went almost two weeks with no lights, no air conditioning, no power for cooking, no hot water for showers….
Early on the city begged people not to open the fire hydrants because of the various dangers: kids running in the street and getting hit by cars, cars driving through large amounts of water and having wet-brake accidents, flooding of nearby basements, and the fear that the water pressure would be too low in the “event of an emergency”. Soon the city realized that this WAS the event of an emergency, and instituted a program of rolling “waves” of open hydrants block-by-block, so that at least the flow could be controlled.
The city also instituted the 311 emergency phone line and opened cooling centers -- places where folks could go just to get out of the terrible heat. The Mayor appeared regularly to remind people to check on the elderly and housebound, so I called my Mom everyday to say I was requested to do so by Rich Daley himself. Many people who depended on oxygen or other mechanical devices or were too sick or too stubborn to leave their homes ended up stacked like cordwood in refrigerated semi trailers parked outside the city morgue. More than 700 people, mostly poor and/or elderly, died as a result of the heat and lack of power.
At the time I worked in the Wicker Park/Bucktown area of the city in a large, busy restaurant that occupied a three story converted brownstone house. Although it was more than 100 degrees outside the building, inside it was a refreshing 85 degrees -- due to the six Volkswagen-sized air conditioning units on the roof. The roof was big and flat and covered with tar. The air units were on full blast for more than 12 hours a day. We were one of the few restaurants not to lose air conditioners or refrigerators during the heat wave, in no small part due to the assigning of an extra bus boy whose sole job it was to hose down the air units continuously during daylight hours.
Slowly the power started to come on in various parts of the city. Each night on the way home from work we would see a few more blocks with streetlights on. Each night we hoped fervently that there would be power on our block. Over and over again we turned onto our street to find only darkness. It seemed as though we were the very last building on the very last street on the very last block to get power. A couple of nights we lay awake in the sweltering darkness, unable to sleep, listening to the air conditioner run in the building across the gangway from ours. Finally one night we realized we could see the lights on at Wrigley Field, and we were sure we would find bright lights and cool air when we arrived home. Nope. Hot and dark.
So for almost a week it was too hot to sleep. It was too hot to wear clothes to bed. No TV, no lights-- what was there to do? Many nights it was too hot to do anything but lay in bed and doze fitfully. But apparently many nights many of us found something to do there in the dark with no clothes on.
And nine months later there was a spike in births at all Chicago city hospitals.
Or so says my friend Susan.
