A family walks down Main Street in Ellicott City, pulling a wet vacuum cleaner as residents clean up after the weekend flood that killed two people and caused millions of dollars in damage.

Aug. 1, 2016 A family walks down Main Street in Ellicott City, pulling a wet vacuum cleaner as residents clean up after the weekend flood that killed two people and caused millions of dollars in damage. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post

See what the scene looks like after flooding in historic Ellicott City

See what the scene looks like after flooding in historic Ellicott City

She realized something was wrong Saturday night when the creaking sound outside her second-floor Main Street apartment grew louder.

Kelly Secret did not know it yet, but she and her boyfriend were trapped. On one side of their building, a creek had flooded, and on the other, a torrent of raging, brown water was devouring Ellicott City’s historic downtown.

“The whole house shook,” she said. “We thought we were gone.”

In two hours, nearly six inches of rain had fallen, an event so extraordinary that the National Weather Service said it should, statistically, occur there just once every 1,000 years.

By Sunday morning, as Gov. Larry Hogan (R) prepared to declare a state of emergency, images and videos of the carnage would spread on social media: bricks torn from sidewalks, streets caved in, cars overturned, foundations obliterated, storefronts gashed, ground floors gutted.





But before the TV cameras arrived, before officials determined that 200 buildings had sustained damage, before the discovery of two bodies that had been swept downriver into Baltimore County, Secret needed to escape.

She had watched the surge push four cars down Main Street, pinning one against a telephone pole. Secret and her boyfriend ran to the front door but discovered that the steps had disappeared. Beneath them, an eight-foot sinkhole had formed in the ground.

Secret, who is in her 40s, could not believe it. Five years ago, she had lost everything when another Main Street flood ravaged her ground-floor apartment, prompting her to move to a second-story home. But now, here she was again, and this time, Secret did not know whether she would survive.

[Capital Weather Gang: More storms possible today, drier midweek]

Helpless, she and her boyfriend retreated to their apartment. Then, suddenly, they heard a cracking noise. Emergency workers armed with axes had climbed onto the roof of a building and kicked in the window of a neighboring antiques store. They then chopped a hole in Secret’s wall, allowing her and her boyfriend to climb out.

She works two jobs, one for a local chocolatier and the other for the Ellicott City Partnership. Both are on Main Street.

“I’m not only homeless; I’m unemployed,” she said Sunday. Her dark blond hair dishevelled, she carried a backpack that held a set of clothes, and she wore a homemade green T-shirt with the words “Historic Ellicott City” written on the front.

Amateur video taken during severe flooding in Ellicott City, Md. on Saturday, July 30, shows a group of people forming a human chain in an attempt to save a woman from a water-logged car. One man is nearly swept away by the rushing flood waters. (Facebook.com/Sara Arditti)

“I don’t think,” she said, “I’ll ever live on Main Street again.”

Baltimore County police identified the two victims as Jessica Watsula, 35, of Lebanon, Pa., and Joseph Anthony Blevins, 38, of Windsor Mill in Baltimore County.

Watsula and her family, tourists to the area, were in their car when the flash flood struck, police said. The other occupants escaped and were rescued before being taken to Howard County General Hospital. Watsula’s body was later found 200 yards from the Ilchester Bridge.

Blevins and his girlfriend were also driving through town when the gush of water caught their car. She climbed out and found rescue, but he could not break free from the current. His body was found Sunday morning by a hiker who spotted it on the shore of the Patapsco River near the Howard County line.

Among the 200 damaged buildings, police said, five have been classified as destroyed. About 170 cars must be towed from the streets or pulled from the Patapsco.

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us,” said Hogan, who toured the wreckage with U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) on Sunday morning. “We are going to do everything we can to immediately help people, make sure there is housing, get things back on track.”

Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman (R), who vowed that Ellicott City would recover, described the 244-year-old town’s epicenter as “a scene from a disaster movie.”

[See more photos and video from the flood]

In another harrowing episode, captured on video and posted to Facebook, three men formed a human chain through the furious current to reach a woman trapped inside her car.

“I can’t do this,” the woman yelled as she crawled halfway out.

“You have to,” someone shouted back.

The man closest to her was Jason Barnes, whose business, All Time Toys, was being wrecked by floodwaters. He stretched out his arm, but he could not reach the woman. So he let go of the chain and stumbled forward. Just seconds after he had fallen and was nearly submerged, he took the driver in his arms and carried her to safety.

“Jason was incredibly brave and a little bit reckless to wade out to that,” said David Dempster, co-owner of Main Street’s Still Life Gallery. “When he went down, I thought that was it for Jason. I thought he would be swept away to his death.”

Saturday’s disaster was not the first to befall the town.

“It seems,” the Baltimore Sun wrote in 2012, “that Ellicott City has come in for an inordinate amount of disasters from floods, fires and railroad wrecks since its founding in 1772.”

The unincorporated town of 68,000 has endured at least four major floods, according to the Maryland Historic District’s web site, including a pair in the 1970s, another in 1923 and one in 1868 that “wiped out most of early industry in the valley sparing only the flour mill.”

Ellicott City’s geography makes it particularly vulnerable, said Jason Elliott, a National Weather Service hydrologist.

It is bordered by the Patapsco and by areas of higher elevation, which means heavy rain could trigger flooding from two directions, as it did in this case.

[This historic mill town has seen many, many floods]

On Sunday, officials asked residents to remain patient as emergency crews assess the damage and work to ensure structures are safe. Hogan and other elected officials said the county, state and federal governments will work together to make sure the affected area is rebuilt.

“This is not going to be cleared up in a day or two,” Kittleman said.

Cummings, who has an office on Main Street and knows many of the city’s business owners, said the rebuilding effort will take “a lot of money and a lot of patience.”

Hundreds offered condolences on social media.

“Be safe out there #maryland prayers & thoughts with all in #ellicottcity,” former Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis tweeted.

When the rain began, Karry Brown, 42, was enjoying dinner with his wife at the Phoenix Emporium on Main Street. As the weather worsened, restaurant staff moved the 50 or so guests up to a third floor.

“We were just watching in disbelief at how the water was sweeping cars away,” said Brown, of Odenton, Md. “It was pretty dramatic.”

His wife’s car was nearly among those washed away. She had parked it on Maryland Avenue, perpendicular to Main Street, which sustained the worst flooding. The water pushed the car out of its parking spot and into the road.

Once they left the restaurant, they managed to start the vehicle and drive slowly out of town. But soon, Brown said, “the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree,” and the engine died, forcing them to call a tow truck that arrived about two hours later.

Shannon Tolley, 45, of Manheim, Pa., had stopped with a friend in the basement of Ellicott Mills Brewing Co. Soon, she said, a flash flood warning appeared on her phone, and water began to leak into the bar.

Patrons were moved up to the first floor, then the second and the third.

“The water was just rushing down the street,” she said, “like a big river.”

By about 9 p.m., the water had receded enough for Tolley, a music teacher, to venture outside. She waded through ankle-deep water to her car, which had been parked high enough on a hill to prevent it from being lost.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Tolley said.

One Ellicott City man named Kirk Cummings, who lives outside downtown, was watching a movie with his family when it began to rain.

“I knew it was going to be awful,” said Cummings, 44.

He got into his Toyota 4Runner and drove toward the flooding. Before he picked up a man and two women who had been stranded, Cummings watched the cars being pushed and pulled down his town’s most beloved street.

Some of those cars, he recalled, were still occupied. But he could do nothing to help the people inside.

“The looks on their faces,” he said as he struggled to stay composed.

Martin Weil, Eddy Palanzo and Theresa Vargas contributed to this report.