Extreme weather strikes again – and one street in Baltimore will never be the same.
An early spring storm – the Baltimore area’s biggest in decades – pounded the region with as much as 7 inches of rain, shuttering businesses and schools as surging water overflowed onto roads, smashed trees and flooded basements.
One city block in Baltimore suffered the worst fate of all. A sidewalk and street in the Charles Village neighborhood buckled and caved Wednesday afternoon, swallowing with it more than half a dozen cars and two streetlights onto the train tracks below. At least 20 people were evacuated.
Many other roads have been closed and commuting schedules have been chaotic as crews strained to clean up after the storm.
The Department of Public Works in Baltimore County reported that floods dumped 1.6 million gallons of sewer and rainwater down Dulaney Valley Road in Towson’s Eudowood neighborhood – while 25,000 gallons overflowed in other nearby locations.
The Baltimore Sun had more:
Along the Jones Falls, many business owners said the water levels rose to the highest they had seen since the 1970s, bursting through doors, devastating inventories, and sweeping cars and dumpsters downstream.
At the distribution center Komar Co., which has operated from Clipper Mill Road since 1992, manager James Womer estimated $1 million worth of damage from the water, which circumvented riverside floodgates and poured through the parking lot. Water rose 3 feet inside the complex — far higher than the 2 inches previously observed, said Womer, who returned to the building around 8 p.m. Wednesday after evacuating earlier that afternoon.
“The worst ever,” he concluded. “It was running just like a river through here.”
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