Sinkhole In New Lenox Closes Down City's Busiest Road
CHICAGO (CBS)-- Thousands use Gougar Road In New Lenox every day, and it's now shut down indefinitely.
Friday's rain event dropped 6 to 8 inches of rain in New Lenox. That amount of water in that short amount of time buckled the bottom part of a 6-foot pipe that runs right under the city's busiest road.
It's not the only road in need of repair.
Friday's torrential downpour turned a small creek into a gusher and caused roadside erosion on Saturday.
Chopper 2 showed the damage from the sky.
Jeff Ronaldson's been on the engineering beat in Will County for over 20 years.
"I have not seen anything quite like this," he said. "The material that's supporting the pipes, the stone around it, it washed it away, the sand, it's like going to the beach and the water washes away the sand."
Fourteen miles away in Wilton Township near Peotone another flooded creek created another collapse.
But in New Lenox, where roads are down and detours are up thousands, including families at nearby Lincoln Way West High School who are shuffling their daily routines around the damage.
Engineers scramble to replace the pipe, then pave and patch Gougar Road.
If materials can arrive quickly, the road can be fixed in a week. If this does not happen, it could take the better part of a month before the busiest road in New Lenox is back open to traffic.
CBS2 found the county already had plans in motion to replace the pipe that gave way this weekend. This incident forces them to move much faster on that replacement project.