For the second time in as many decades, illegal underground tunnels have wrecked havoc on the city of Chicago. This week a large section of the Kennedy Expressway, the major urban highway in Chicago, buckled and failed, closing all but one lane of the four lane highway. The preliminary cause has been traced to century-old abandoned railroad tunnels created, illegally, by Chicago Tunnel Company. A contractor was busy pumping the tunnel full of concrete, in order to limit the chance of a repeat of the 1992 Chicago Flood. The concrete pumping was overzealous, as the pressure of the concrete (concrete expands as it sets) buckled the soil above it which caused the Kennedy Sinkhole of 2009.

These tunnels have a history of overzealousness which trace back to their construction. The tunnels were officially built to house only telephone cables, but the tunnel company built the tunnels with six feet wide by seven and one-half high – big enough to fit a shrunken train set. In went the telephone lines and the train, and out went coal, soot and ash. After just a dozen years later, the company went out of business and the tunnels became dormant. In 1992 they were punctured by a pile which sent millions of gallons of Chicago RIver water into the basements of buildings in the Loop, thus the 1992 Chicago Flood.