ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Only a smattering of sandbags was seen up and down Ellicott City’s famed Main Street Monday night, hours before Hurricane Isaias made landfall in North Carolina and trekked further up the East Coast.
Downtown was desolate, as business owners cleared outdoor dining areas and city officials banned cars from parking anywhere along the thoroughfare for 24 hours.
The directives to empty the street were simple and widely understood. In both 2016 and 2018, swift floodwaters cascaded down Main Street into the Patapsco River, carrying cars, trucks and furniture through storefront windows and into scores of businesses.
But seen preparing for Isaias Monday were a handful of entrepreneurs who survived the last destructive deluges, storms classified as events supposed to happen once a millennium, found within the span of two years.
“I’ve actually moved my business nine times in Ellicott City, because of flooding,” Kelly Myers, owner of the Main Street vintage boutique, A Journey from Junk, said. “But I love this place, I love the people. Friends were asking me if I needed sandbags this morning even before I got here.”
A new flash flood alarm system is also now in place, which sounded for the first time on June 22. Store owners up and down Main also have a web of Facebook group, text and email alerts, if any of the entrepreneurs notices water rising.
“We are all here and we feel a unique sense of protecting one another,” Shelley Sharkey, owner of the fitness studio, Miss Fit, said. “Right now, we’re just battening down the hatches, putting out good vibes and hoping for the best.”