A video posted online by local media of the so-called human chain shows an unidentified woman in a compact convertible auto as muddy, waist-deep waters gush down a roadway that looks like a raging river. Howard County officials have calculated that 170 damaged cars are now being towed to impound lots.
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“Get out, get out”, someone screamed to her.
As water continued rising, Weglein says she hugged the others there and feared she’d never see her 2-year-old son again. The flooding was worse than that from Hurricane Agnes in 1972, when a bridge and historic structures were wiped out, Kittleman said. When the water went down, they walked out to find incredible damage, feeling grateful to have survived. The men were able to rescue the woman and pull her to safety.
Photos from WMAR show vehicles nearly completely submerged and water flooding the streets.
The picturesque Main Street of Ellicott City, Maryland, faces a months-long recovery that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars after devastating flooding that damaged almost every home and business along the road.
In all, at least four properties were completely destroyed and another 20 to 30 buildings were badly damaged, Kittleman said in a statement. “Then we found out people died and then it hit us”.
“They told me that the door was totally ripped away from the hinges, and I don’t know how much water I have inside”, Breidenbach told The AP by phone Sunday.
But overall, extreme rainfall is not necessarily one of the weather events that can be definitively linked to climate change with a high level of confidence, the most comprehensive report on the subject said earlier this year. And in June, 23 died in a in West Virginia flood caused by heavy rain.
Workers stabilize a building on Main Street after the sidewalk caved in due to overnight flooding in Ellicott City, Md., Sunday, July 31, 2016. “There’s hills on both sides, the river’s on the third side”, Elliott said. The rain from the storm swamped the small watershed of the Tiber and Hudson rivers that spills into the Patapsco, Howard County emergency official Ryan Miller told the newspaper.
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The massive rainfall that caused a devastating flash flood in Ellicott City, Md., last weekend was a rare 1-in-1,000-year event that has been happening with unprecedented frequency in recent years, meteorologists said. Main Street slopes dramatically toward the river and has always been susceptible to flooding.
