![]() ![]() ![]() It was the third major flood since 2011 in Ellicott City, which was founded in 1772 at the site of a grist mill along the banks of the Patapsco River. "She was so frantic because she witnessed Eddie get swept away." "After Eddie left, I saw a woman come in later who was frantic," he said. He, too, said Sunday's flood seemed far worse than the one in 2016. Most customers stayed inside, where Cortes offered refuge for wedding guests celebrating at the nearby Main Street Ballroom. Simon Cortes, La Palapa's owner, said his restaurant suffered some water damage, but its hilltop location prevented it from destruction. Police had allowed him inside his shop on Monday, where he saw thousands of dollars of rugs soaked by the storm, he said., "worse than last time."īut, like other locals, he wasn't allowed to linger long enough to bring any of the merchandise out. "Like a phoenix, it will rise from the ashes. "This is a great community and a great country," he said. Yet he is optimistic about rebuilding once more. He believes climate change is at least partly to blame for two so-called "thousand-year-floods" in two years. He'd built a retaining wall two years ago, but water had poured into his 120-year-old building anyway. Mojan Bagha, owner of Main Street Oriental Rugs, said it had taken him three months to fix the damage in 2016. Once again, many storefronts and buildings up and down the historic downtown were severely damaged, including homes and businesses that had only recently recovered from the flooding two years ago. Larry Hogan, echoed a similar storm in the summer of 2016, which left two people dead. The massive flooding, which prompted a state of emergency declaration from Maryland Gov. "If we called him right now saying we needed help looking for someone, Eddie would be there in five minutes."Īuthorities say Hermond, of Severn, Maryland, was swept away during the flood, and remained missing on Monday. "He's that kind of guy," said his close friend, Kenneth Josepha, a State Department analyst from Northern Virginia, whose wedding 13 years ago on Monday included Hermond as a groomsman. When a woman came into La Palapa Grill & Cantina and said her cat was stranded in a nearby pet store, customer Eddison "Eddie" Hermond, 39, offered to help. But the rainstorm outside morphed into a relentless downpour, fueling what soon became a river that dislodged parked cars and flooded buildings along Main Street in Ellicott City. Howard County has also invested in a series of retention ponds on the outskirts of Old Ellicott City, including one with the capacity to retain more than 3 million gallons of stormwater and release it slowly once the danger has passed.It was supposed to be a routine late-Sunday lunch over Mexican food. The county has received $75 million in federal low-interest loan through the EPA's Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act for the project, bringing the total amount of county, state and federal money invested in flood mitigation over the last four years to $167 million. "It will be one of the most important, impactful, transformational projects that Public Works has done in the history of our town," Ball said. It amounts to enough water to fill an in-ground swimming pool being diverted into the river every second. Once completed, the tunnel, located about 100 feet underground and measuring 18 feet in diameter, will carry 26,000 gallons of stormwater per second away from the town's streets and into the Patapsco, said Howard County Executive Calvin Ball. Ellicott City, founded in the 18th century as a mill town and the site of the first terminus of the B&O Railroad outside the city, suffered two 1,000-year floods in 20, damaging dozens of businesses and killing three people. ![]()
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