Steve Burns
WMAL.com
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. – (WMAL) Six inches of rain in two hours is unprecedented. But flooding in Ellicott City is not, and it’s likely to happen again.
“The earliest records we have of a devastating flood in Ellicott City is 1817, and from there it’s pretty much every 20 years,” Howard County Historical Society Executive Director Shawn Gladden told WMAL. “When the Ellicotts found this area, it was ideal for them. But it’s hard to imagine anyone could have foreseen the weather problems.
Those problems are exacerbated by the town’s location, which Gladden calls a funnel, surrounded on all sides by granite down to the Patapsco River. The worst flood, known to historians as the Great Flood, happened in 1868, just after the Civil War’s end, that destroyed mills, washed away houses, and killed around 40 people, Gladden said.
The area saw another significant flood thanks to Hurricane Agnes in 1972, which Gladden noted hurt the town from an entirely different direction. He said this past weekend’s flood came rushing down from the top of the hill, whereas the 1972 flood rose up from the bottom of the hill and the river. That flood ended any milling operations still left in town and set Ellicott City on the road to becoming a tourist destination.
“Now, when these floods occur, they damage small businesses,” Gladden said.
Gladden said there is always an effort to renew and revitalize drainage infrastructure following these big floods, but Mother Nature always seems to outdo herself.
“Hopefully we will be in a better position the next time something like this happens,” Gladden said. “But one thing’s for sure: it will happen again.”
