WBBM Channel 2 News Special Report - "Blizzard '79: Public Questions, City Answers" (Part 1, 1979)
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- Here's Part 1 of a Channel 2 News Special Report, "Blizzard '79: Public Questions, City Answers," a call-in show hosted by Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson on WBBM Channel 2, from five days after the city was socked by a massive snowstorm that went up to 20 inches and brought everything to a standstill (and ultimately cost Michael Bilandic his job as Mayor). Also featuring Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Chairman James McDonough, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Francis Degnan, Fire Commissioner Richard Albrecht, and Police Superintendent James O'Grady. Includes:
Station ID/Promo for Dinah with a still of a motorcycle stunt (voiceover by ??)
Channel 2 News Special Report bumper slide (voiceover by ??)
Scenes of Chicago and environs after the big blizzard, with Bill Kurtis describing the aftermath (including the closure of O'Hare Airport), and referring to "the winter of Chicago's discontent," as introduction to this special program, "Blizzard '79: Public Questions, City Answers" (with title coming up on screen)
Dissolve to long shot of newsroom-studio (notice, at the bottom right of the screen, the Thomson TTV-1518 camera with Q-TV VPS-100 prompter atop the camera lens) as Walter Jacobson begins the introduction of this program's guests, starting with James McDonough, Chairman of CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) and Francis Degnan, Commissioner of the Department of Streets and Sanitation; then Kurtis introduces Fire Commissioner Richard Albrecht and Police Superintendent James O'Grady. As each person is introduced, Jacobson and then Kurtis describe the adverse effect the blizzard had on all services over which these men held authority, with pertinent video clips to illustrate the point.
The first question (from a woman complaining about half-empty buses not stopping for passengers waiting at stops) is posed by Jacobson to McDonough, who claims that the buses are over capacity due to being behind schedule (look for shots of vintage GM and Flxible "New Look" buses that were part of the CTA's rolling stock for years). Kurtis then reads a question from Anne Bangston (sp?) of Hyde Park to Degnan about plowing of city side streets; Degnan insist he's trying to keep the "main arterials" open, and bracing for another blizzard by Friday or Saturday; McDonough interjects about his own experiences at the time of the 1967 blizzard, and comparing the response of city agencies then and in '79. It was mentioned by McDonough, Kurtis, Jacobson and Degnan that the '67 blizzard started on a weekday, as opposed to the weekend start of the '79 blizzard.
Jacobson then moves on to Police and Fire, reading a question from Toby Silverberg of West Rogers Park on the issue of towing double-parked cars on snow-plagued streets; the first answer is by Police Superintendent O'Grady who insists that towing equipment is headed for the streets, followed by posting of "No Parking" signs by Streets and Sanitation. Jacobson then reads a question from Deanna (sp?) Lane of East Rogers Park about whether illegally-parked cars on side streets will be ticketed, and O'Grady explains the procedure of that aspect. Kurtis then questions Albrecht about what people could do to help the Fire Department in terms of fire hydrants and other equipment; Albrecht advises people to help clear lanes. Jacobson reads a critical question from a Mr. Odega (sp?) of the Northwest Side about removal of snow from schoolyards onto fire lanes. Kurtis then signals for a commercial break and invites others to call in.
Commercial: Comfortcale "Royal Family" by Cannon - with a night watchman checking the mattress (and its softness) up close - with 20% more cotton - "One Touch Is Not Enough" - At Wieboldt's
Commercial: Chicago Health & Racquetball Club - Join Now at '78 Rates - Rates increase midnight on January 31st (ending "Last Two Weeks" voiceover tag by Jerry Harper?)
Commercial: H&R Block - "Come to H&R Block This Year, So Next Year You Won't Have to Say 'I Should Have Come Last Year'" - Also in Major Sears Stores
Commercial: Dristan - for all major cold symptoms - more than Contac, Vicks, Sinex or Bayer - "It's Better"
This aired on local Chicago TV on Thursday, January 18th 1979. - Zábava
I was 10 year old Chicago kid when this happened. Kurtis and Jacobson are awesome! I LOVE the phones and typewriters going in the background. A TRUE news room!
sucess.,that's nothing.. the first blizzard struck tjust amonth or so after I was born (1962) , the second happened the winter of '66/'67 ( no spring that year)
and the last one was '79/'80 nothing was open.. all of the suburbs were closed!
Not only is this fascinating front-line stuff, but it also shows you just how badass Channel 2 was BITD. They OWNED the news in town.
I was 16 yo at the time. We lived in Country Club Hills. I made $100 shoveling, my arms felt like noodles. I remember walking to the mall with the money, I bought KISS records. And we got some weed. Good times.
I lived in Hanover park, that year. the whole fucking neighborhood was closed...
I remember that two power lines were brought down due to a ice storm that happened in just after new years day.... It was so cold that people were warned not to go outside..HP was whited out ghost town !
Country Club Hills was much different then!
You bought KISS records and weed? UGHHHH Liberalism at it's finest.
@@ryandonato550 What did you expect a 16 year old kid to do with 100 bucks in the 70s? Look for Nixon memorabilia and watch re runs of Leave it to Beaver after dinner prayers? Or smoke week and buy Kiss albums. Hey I am a conservative but a 16 year old kid is a kid and Kiss was cool then and weed isn't going anywhere - get real. Gene Simmons is more conservative than most star billionaires. Caturday had a great memory and story and you pissed on it ! Hey Christ said if you never sinned then YOU throw the first stone - Good shot hypocrite
@@lfh1973 So true. Back when REAL Americans were in the CCH.
Mayor Bilandic lost his job because of the cities' slow reaction to this storm. He was all Machine, when the Machine ruled. Jane Byrne became mayor out of nowhere, and every mayor since has been terrified of snow. LOL.
During Jane Byrne, the city ran out of salt for the streets one winter. No second term for her!
He really screwed up, staying out of town on vacation while the city suffered. Pffffft!
Wow! A young Walter Jacobson and Bill Kurtis! The memories watching the news on cbs channel 2.👌😎👍
I lived on the west side of Chicago. They took snow from the main streets, and piled right in the middle of our side street (Gladys Avenue). It snowed again, and the mountain of snow ended up being nearly 2 stories tall. We were out of school for DAYS. We played on that pile so long that pretty soon it became compacted so much so that we climbed up one side and used the other side as a slide. In the middle of the street! lol
I was 11 yrs old and loved every minute of this snow storm. my brother and I dug tunnels in the ditches and made igloos...played for hours. kids do not care or realize the hassle.
+pam rhoten Same, Pam. Loved it!
I love Chicago winters.
So great to see this! I was eight years old, we lived out in Lombard at the time. As others here have said, as a kid, you aren’t aware of the struggle. It was just great fun staying home from school and making igloos in the backyard.
I lived in Villa Park then, right across from Jackson Junior High; did you all have school officially cancelled? I remember one day that my Mom didn’t make me walk to school when the wind chill was -63 below zero, but I don’t recall if school was closed even during the blizzard (maybe the schools were still on Christmas break then?)
7 going on 8 and loved every minute of ths storm being too young to realize just what a disaster it was. For us kids it was a Winter playland the likes of which we never saw. We had a blast digging tunnels jumping off roofs, and yes we did help the adults with digging out. One older lady down the street was making hot cocoa by the gallon for all of us out there clearing our 2 blocks of street, another made cinnabuns. Cold as it was we had a good time and quite a few days off school.
This was three years before I was born, but my parents remember this blizzard quite well; they turned 30 that year. I showed this to them, and they said they remembered watching it, as they were faithful CBS viewers. Thanks so much for uploading these videos -- it was a nice (and cold!) walk down memory lane for them.
At the time of the original broadcast, the entire Chicagoland Area had only one area code, 312.
not in the suburbs.. we laready had 630 by then
That isn't true. Chicagoland didn't get a second area code until 1989 and that was 708.
Goodbye, 708: Switch To Area Code 630 Is Complete
December 02, 1996|By Stephen Lee, Tribune Staff Writer.
New
For anyone who did not try calling into the west suburbs Sunday, or who tried to call and failed and is still wondering what is going on: The grace period is over.
Telephone numbers in DuPage County, a small portion of Cook County and parts of Kane, Kendall and Will Counties no longer are reachable through the 708 area code but through the 630 area code, which has been in place since August.
The switch officially occurred at 12:01 a.m. Saturday and marks the completion of Ameritech's suburban area-code changes--at least for now.
No problems were reported as of Sunday, Ameritech Illinois spokeswoman Lisa Kim said. Engineers had been rerouting the lines since the summer, and extra workers were on hand on the weekend just in case.
"Things are going very smoothly," she said. "By now, we're hopeful that we've gotten the word out to customers."
Ameritech has spent $7 million on customer education outreach, Kim said.
The 630 region extends roughly from St. Charles on the northwest to Bensenville on the northeast, and from Yorkville on the southwest to Lemont on the southeast.
The change from 708 is a side effect of the modern communications age. Fax machines, beepers, cellular phones, computer modems, and alarm systems are helping use up so many seven-digit numbers that phone company officials said they had to create new area codes to compensate.
Which probably still does not make it much easier for the 30,000 customers who got entirely new numbers so that communities along the 847/630 border would not be split across area codes.
Problems arose during the last switch in April, when the north and northwest suburbs changed from 708 to 847. Some customers received inflated bills and incorrectly routed calls.
Ameritech officials said they believe those problems have been ironed out.
Customers' telephone bills are expected to remain the same, with a call within 15 miles charged as such, even if they are to different area codes. Information calls to 411 will continue to work for the entire Chicago region.
Only in Chicago is permissive dialing still allowed. The 312 area code for Chicago split in October, with 312 still serving the downtown area and 773 in the outlying neighborhoods. The grace period for the 312 area code will end Jan. 11 when the switch becomes permanent.
Area code 630 didn't exist until 1996. Read the article.
Kurtis & Jacobsen ruled. I was 7 at this time and I even watched the channel 2 6:00 news nightly. After this storm it was fun for us kids to be play on mountains of snow.
I remember 1967 and this one. This one actually started in December. I flew to Lansing, Michigan for one day. Once I finished my business they closed Lansing Airport AND O'Hare. I went to rent a car, and a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could go with me. He proved that he was a pilot with United, and had no money or luggage. I agreed that he could be my co-pilot. It was the most harrowing drive I ever made. They were threatening to close the Interstates, but I made it back to O'Hare and then home in one piece. I was 24 years old.
I still have a red T-shirt with white letters saying "I survived the Chicago blizzard of '79"! I wonder how many of those still exist...
Thanks for posting this video. Brings back memories of my senior high school year. Mayor Bilandic lost the election over this.
same here..I raduated in the late spring of '80
I was 10 and I remember all the neighbors getting together to dig out the cars. I also enjoyed the week or more we had off of school.I was in the 5th grade at South Park elementary school in Deerfield Illinois.
The look on that guy’s face after Curtis made the comment about opening up the fire lines lol
It was right after Christmas vacation was supposed to end. The schools were closed for another week . Yay!!!! If you got winter gear for Christmas, it was awesome! I remember sledding in snow drifts. We were hoping for another week. It may have cost Bilandic his Mayor's office, but us kids had a blast.
My mom remembers this blizzard. She was living in an apartment on 79th and South Shore Drive when it happened.
NYE '78 was a warning that I was on the way! My mother is from Chicago and she named me Winter on the 3rd. Jan. 12th said "I have arrived"! The Coldest Winter Ever ....in Chicago lol!
I was seven years old then, and I remember I had the time of my life building forts, snowball fights, tunnels, and snowmen!
Hmmm, I recall both '67 and '79. 1967 started with steady snowfall; not much variation in temperature= in the 20s F. In fact, most of the snow had melted off in 3 weeks due to gradual warm up. 1979 was entirely a different animal. The New Year 1979 Snowstorm was followed by a drastic drop in temperature, below 0 F, and most of January stayed that way. February was not much better. January 1979 had multiple snowstorms, each compounding the problems of the previous storms. It was a winter to remember, for sure. A prolonged thaw did not begin until Mid March at which time most of the snow seen since January was still around.
that would be'66 /'67.. it started with a horrendous cold snap that kept falling ..then came the snow...I was 4 years
old you're wrong about teh temp in the winter of '79..-20 both temp& wind chill
I remember the Blizzard of 1979.I was living in Jeffery Manor in a townhouse we couldn't get out the house the snow was that high.
The snow was onet hing.. but it was fucking cold that winter.. -20 degrees temp..& -20 wind chill! even colder in the northwestern suburbs ! brrrrrrrrrrr
I was 15 living in Hegewisch near the Ford plant in the 10th ward the city was loading snow in dump trucks and dumping it in the prairie off green Bay Ave between 130th and 135th streets endloaders we're stacking it like mountains was pretty cool climbing up on them and sledding down
The great thing about these newscasters that we miss today is that they wrote their own copy. Note the reference to Shakespeare. OMG!
Roger Conner now is the winter of our discontent!!! Awesome!
bill kurtis sounds kool as hell
He's the narrator in the Anchorman movies ;)
Degnan looks like an old Daley hack
Bill & Walter still occupying those chairs today,I had been in the Buffalo blizzard 2 years before.
Was in the Chicago burbs for 2 years then this storm.They were out to get me ; ) Walter made an entire living /career revealing chicago blunders & corruption
i remembered that one!! literally no one went to work couldnt drive man that was one worst Snow Storms!!!
I was in 8th grade at St columba school in Hegewisch on the far Southeast side of Chicago at the time I remember the city was loading the snow in dump trucks and hauling it to the prairie along Green Bay Ave by my school my friends and I would go sled down these mountains of snow we were having such a blast played outside for hours
I remember this blizzard.
Wow! Thank you for this video. I was born in '84, and am thankful to be able to see how the news used to be, and how Chicagoans used to speak and think.
Chicago culture is kind of underrated or unknown in some ways. A lot of the local things are kind of like “secrets”
Love Bill Kurtis
Wow, this brings back memories. I was only 21 in Jan '79. My car was completely encased in ice and snow until early March. I had to walk over a mile to the nearest bus stop to get to work in the Loop. Downtown was much better because the sidewalks were heated and the streets plowed. But it still took over 2 hours to get to work. It made for very long, bleak days. Mayor Bilandic was a complete incompetent.
Yes i remember he had all the buses and L trains only going to the North Side
I w as 17 so was Jane Byrne
Luckily I was in Florida with my folks when this mess hit. Pretty sure this is why Mayor Balandic never got re-elected.
srok62 he was never elected, period. He took over when Daley died.
Incredible footage, Thank you.
Oh, boy do I remember this. I was eleven years old in Rolling Meadows and for us it was glorious. Two weeks out of school, nothing to do except watch cartoons, and play in the woods nearby. Of course I had shovel the sidewalk and driveway, sometimes two or three times a day. I live in Florida now, and I don't miss snow.
I remember this very well didn't have to go to school hard to get out of the house snow all the way up to the top of the doors
The Blizzard of 1979 was *HORRIBLE* for Chicago because after that snowstorm, it was a followed by nearly _two months_ of under 32° F. (0° C.) weather, which made snowmelt nearly impossible and caused a massive nightmare in not only cleanup, but keeping commuter trains running. It was until late March 1979 that the snow finally start to melt and cleanup could be completed.
I had a super 8 camera since 1977. I remember when the elevated Dan Ryan el had fallen off the lake street curve. Then Im in drafting class and they send us home with an anticipated school closing so we packed our things and packed on the big green CTA bus for a slow peel home. I got my camera and walked to cottage grove and filmed the snowed in buses and cars sitting diagonal in the streets. Cars buried over their roof. Then it froze. Our side street saw no clearence. Nothing moved but the wind renewing the snowy surfaces. And all these old Daley guys are talking about are tickets!
Bill and Walter were the shit. If Bill said it, it was true, and if Walter got on your ass, you were fucked.
What a spectacular command of the English language!
runner6500 Saw that toward the end of this. You have the officials giving a line and Walter/Bill Responded.
???WHAT!!!???
Really enjoyed shoveling the driveway back then.
I was a baby at the time. We lived on 82nd and Drexel. My dad said he barely made it home from work. He parked his car blocks away and left it. The next day he had difficulty finding the car!
We didn't have school for the entire winter that year lol .. As a kid this was a great blizzard.
My mom used to work for Wieboldt's.
You can literally see how out of touch these officials were.....
A panoply of Old White Guys.
I recognize that voice.. City confidential!
Sunday January 14, 1979, exactly 45 years ago tonight, it hit -14 for a record low, it's a similar story in Chicago on Sunday January 14, 2024.
Slow news day = let's "remember" & politicise disasters. Stir decades old ( never addressed) shit up!
I was only 4 (and living down in Peoria at the time) and remember this WELL.
I was 8 and had a blast through it.
This was back when the News was really THE NEWS ! I miss those CBS guys.
McDonough and Degnan definitely had that Bridgeport accent.
I worked at McDonough and Assoc. engineers for twenty years. Jim was a good guy RIP
I remember the blizzard of 79 I was living in Eden Green I made a igloo out the snow that was piled pushed up against the sidewalk
They all have the Deer in the headlights look.
ANY one here from the northwest side of Chicago,,,, I was 12 at this time.... Lived by Superdawg. My dad worked for streets and sanitation,,,, stores where runnin out of milk,,,,, I was as happy as a lark tho,,,, no school !!!!! Anyone remember. Hitch and St. Tars ???
I lived through both blizzard of 67(age 10) and in 79 i had my 2 little girls!
67 storm was worst, Snowed so high, cars were buried. 79 storm was bad....just poor snow removal, and the time of day it snowed.
+TheCodedtestament
"Snowed so high, cars were buried". I can go one better: Snow accumulation was so high in the alley behind my grandparents apartment building(73rd & Cottage Grove), it literally reached roof eaves of garages!! Yeah, your car was protected from the elements. But it was days, if not weeks, before it would see the light of day. I saw this first hand; I was eleven years old at the time.
Like this comment if you think Bill Kurtis is the biggest badass ever in television news :)
I was 16 yo at the time. We lived in Harvey which a lot different place to live. I was a student at TTHS an had to shovel our garage roof off it was about to cave in from the weight of the snow.
I was in 7th grade I think. They closed schools down for like 3 days or something.
Who is watching this in 1980?
In upstate New York around Buffalo, it snowed for 44 straight days and 17 people died. Because of this, climatologists were predicting another ice age. Now, it's all about global warming. What happened to the second ice age?
Funny, I don't ever remember A Thanksgiving day temperature of 75 degrees before now, but I ain't complaining. That 75 in January would be swell.
As if a new person in charge was going to do better. A person in charge gets fired and that person had the most current experience. How can replacing that person change things? How do we know Byrne changed anything and it wasn't just the snow melting itself that cleared the path? lol
Don't smile ! Do not.
CTA Bus #9232!
Comparing the Great Storm of '67 (2 days) with January 1979 is a joke. It is so mentioned. The Winter of '79--each major storm (three of them in January --1st-13th and 23rd) were accompanied by sub-zero temperatures and wind. The temperature in January likely averaged less 10F. First thaw Mid-March. 1967 storm occurred with 20ish F temperatures and after 3 weeks most of the snow had melted due to warmer weather and lots of sunshine. '79 had few sunny days and snow piles existed til May!!
the sub zero temps & wind chill started around november 3 rd... but the snow storms started maybe in mid to late november.... the ice storm started after new years day... I remember this blizzard..because no one went out !
Francis Degnan looks like he could pass for Woody Hayes' twin brother.
It was a good week to be snowed into your cute girlfriend's apartment.
better than being snowed in with an ugly girlfriends apartment for sure
Paul Anthony LOL 😂
Good times for sure
I wonder how many babies were conceived...
they all look like gangsters