BRAVING THE COLD
Failing furnaces, frozen pipes, dead car batteries make surviving the cold no snap
As the news of the looming deep freeze came last week, Kris DeVries started worrying about her 30-year-old furnace.
It managed to keep up with the cold weather until Monday, when the aging furnace finally gave out, and the temperature in her Orland Park home dropped.
“It felt inevitable. In the back of my mind, I knew my days were numbered,” DeVries said.
A technician with Four Seasons Heating, Air Conditioning, Plumbing and Electric came out and assessed the furnace Monday. He said he could come back and replace it the next day.
DeVries slept that night with an electric blanket, two regular blankets and two space heaters. She woke up Tuesday morning to a 50-degree house.
“It was a painful price to pay, but it needed to be done,” DeVries said.
DeVries was not alone. As temperatures continue to hover around zero in the Chicago area, residents have been struggling to keep their homes warm and their cars operating.
Ben Jungman, the vice president of business development for Four Seasons, said his company has responded to about 2,500 service calls over the last three days, mainly from people who have lost their heat.
“It’s been extremely busy,” Jungman said.
Four Seasons, with five locations in the area, has been fixing and replacing furnaces, changing out the batteries in generators and dealing with frozen or burst pipes.
Replacing 100 furnaces a day
Furnaces failing spell disaster in these frigid conditions, Jungman said. When a home loses heat, temperatures inside can drop to the 40s, which can then cause pipes to freeze and burst.
Since Saturday, Jungman estimates Four Seasons has replaced about 100 furnaces a day. A new furnace from Four Seasons ranges in price from $4,000 to $20,000. On Monday alone, the plumbing department responded to about 300 calls for frozen pipes.
Jeremy Melnick, the vice president of hardware sales for JC Licht Ace in the Chicago area, said its space heater inventory was wiped clean over the last day.
“When we were first hit with the snow, people were coming in for snow blowers and shovels. Then the cold came and people needed ice melt. But then yesterday, people realized, holy cow, it’s really cold,” Melnick said. “We were sitting on a nice chunk of inventory of space heaters, and those were pretty much gone in 24 hours.”
Most of the customers shopping for space heaters said the heat wasn’t working in their apartment building; others were needing them to defrost frozen pipes, Melnick said. Some customers were also coming in for furnace filters.
“You deal with the mild weather for long enough,” Melnick said, “and then you get the first real cold spell, and you remember you live in Chicago.”
On the road
Conditions on roadways in and around Chicago have been treacherous the last few days.
Maria Castaneda, spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the first issue was the light and fluffy snow falling and being picked up by the wind, causing low visibility on the roads.
But then when the temperatures dropped, the wet pavement froze, creating slick spots and black ice. Overpasses and bridges have been especially dangerous, Castaneda said.
From Friday morning to noon on Tuesday, the Illinois State Police responded to about 567 calls for help on expressways in the Chicago area. Those calls were due to cars sliding out, spinning out or breaking down, a police spokesperson said.
Nick Jarmusz, the director of public affairs for AAA, said the auto club experienced a significant spike in calls from Illinois motorists over the last few days compared with the same time last year. The auto club has around 1 million customers in the state.
The biggest spike was Monday when AAA got 510% more calls than last year on Jan. 15.
“That’s a huge jump in the amount of calls we get,” Jarmusz said.
Batteries biggest problem
Most of the calls, about 60%, were battery related, which Jarmusz said is the part of a car most affected when it gets super cold.
Electric cars are especially impacted by cold weather, Jarmusz added. Temperatures below 20 degrees can reduce an electric car’s battery range by nearly half, a AAA study found.
AAA’s service calls have also included drivers who slid off the road, likely when running over a patch of black ice.
Cars slip off the road in part because the tires aren’t inflated properly, Jarmusz said. Cold temperatures reduce tire pressure and poorly inflated tires lose traction.
Jarmusz also recommended that drivers keep their fuel tanks at least half full to prevent fuel lines from freezing.
Out on the icy roads, he said it’s not safe to use cruise control because when a car hits the ice — the cruise control misreads it and tries to accelerate. A car with four-wheel drive, he added, will still slip and slide when breaking on ice like any other car.
Two Boeing jets collided at O’Hare International Airport on Sunday evening, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday.
The left wingtip of a taxiing All Nippon Airways Boeing 777 struck a Delta Air Lines 717 about 6:30 p.m. No injuries were reported, and the FAA is investigating, according to FAA spokesperson Tony Molinaro. The area where the collision occurred was not under air traffic control.
A representative for Boeing said the company had no comment about the incident and directed a reporter to the FAA and the airlines involved.
No explanation has been given caused the incident.
Delta spokesperson Emma Johnson said Delta Flight 2122 was undergoing final parking after arriving at O’Hare from Detroit when the wingtip of another aircraft struck the plane.
“Customers deplaned normally at the gate, for what and the aircraft is being evaluated by Delta’s maintenance technicians,” the company said in an emailed statement.
According to All Nippon Airways’ flight tracker, Flight 11, bound for Tokyo Narita, was canceled due to “weather conditions and aircraft inspection.”
All Nippon Airways spokesperson Nao Gunji said the aircraft had departed from the gate when Chicago Air Traffic Control contacted the flight crew.
“Upon returning to the tarmac for aircraft inspection, indications of scrapes were visible on the wingtip, and ANA is currently evaluating the details,” the company said in an emailed statement.