Mud, mud and more mud: Main Street cleanup grinds on in Ellicott City

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Days after the devastating flood, business owners and county officials reported solid progress Wednesday with the cleanup in Ellicott City. But a firsthand view of the damage shows that there’s much work ahead and it is still unclear when Main Street can reopen.

The flood damage has left a heavy scent of soaked carpeting and the pungent organic odor of river mud.

Volunteers, some wearing hooded, disposable coveralls, others in boots and gloves used shovels to dig into the mud which still covers the floors of some of the buildings. Others picked their way through muddied debris.

A team of volunteers were helping the owner of E.C. Pops, Doug Yeakey, clean up the gourmet popcorn and candy store he co-owns on Main Street.

“It’s absolutely amazing. We’ll come down here and start working, and before we know it, we turn around [and] there are people saying, ‘What can I do to help?’ A lot of them are customers that we’ve seen coming in the store over the course of the last year-plus … Others are complete strangers,” Yeakey said.

Yeakey conceded that he has shed plenty of tears about the disastrous losses he is suffered, but when people lend a helping hand, tears of sorrow give way to tears of joy over random acts of kindness.

“Now we cry every time someone says, ‘Here, let me buy you dinner,’ or, ‘Here, I want you to take this and sell this, try to make some money,'” Yeakey said. His business is among the many looking for a financial lift by establishing a GoFundMe page.

County Executive Allan Kittleman was among the residents, shopkeepers and volunteers ferried to the secured disaster site for cleanup work, in small off-road utility vehicles driven by Howard County park rangers.

“I think right now the people of Ellicott City have continued to show their strength and resilience, and continue to amaze the whole world. And so I think we’re doing well. I think right now most business owners will tell you they’re probably weeks ahead of schedule than they were two years ago,” said Kittleman, referring to the extensive damage caused by the 2016 flood.

Some of the businesses recovered and reopened from the 2016 flood just a few months ago, only to see their progress washed away in the second flood. Some shopkeepers are weighing whether to continue their business after cleanup or call it quits. Some have decided to move on.

“We’re just here to give them all the resources we can. We want to make sure they know that we want to support them any way we can,” Kittleman said.

There is no estimate of when the cleanup will be complete and Main Street can reopen.

“I think it’s too soon to do that and you also don’t want to bring an expectation that maybe we can’t meet,” Kittleman said.

Jonathan Weinstein, a Howard County Council member who represents District 1 which includes the flood-damaged downtown, suggested that the historic Main Street may never look the same.

Main Street is parallel to the Tiber River.

“In the [upcoming] months, we’re going to have some very deep conversations about what this town’s going to look like after this recovery. We are considering reconfiguring the town,” he said.

Weinstein said the future downtown could have fewer buildings and more open waterways to better manage the flow of water.

“We’re going to start envisioning that new Ellicott City over the coming months,” he said.