A historic flash flood tore through Ellicott City over the weekend, a once-in-a-thousand-years kind of weather event that left two dead. The toll might’ve been worse, though, if not for the heroic intervention of a group of bystanders.
Human chain formed by local business owner to rescue woman from Ellicott City Flood pic.twitter.com/CrplNG4Oit
— Black Female Blues (@ArbsGotTheBlues) July 31, 2016
The video above shows how a group of Ellicott City residents formed a human chain in order to help rescue a woman from a car as the flood waters tore through the town’s historic Main Street.
According to the Sun, the flood left two dead and four or five buildings totally destroyed. Another 20-30 buildings were significantly damaged, and 170 cars that had been parked on Main Street–right in the path of the deadly flood–had to be towed. The Sun also has stories of cars being swept downstream with occupants still inside and others cowering inside buildings at risk of collapsing.
This weekend’s deluge was much worse than the one that damaged the town in 2011–which, as you may remember, was considered a historically bad event. In an ominously prescient 2014 article, the Sun interviewed Ellicott City residents who said they were bracing for another inundation, particularly considering the fact that extreme weather events have been on the rise. Sadly, they were proven right.
