Everyone okay?

[xiao_ke]

Ellicott City is in for bad times in the future based on the current lay of the land. I hope for minimal loss of life, and I would warn people to move from there.

For those not familiar, look up Daniels MD and hurricane Agnes.

With all the development in the last 10 years, there is a lot less land up in the hills to soak up the rain water. Howard County government is hungry for the new tax receipts without thinking about the long term environmental effects of all the new development.

[xiao_ke]

From the footage I saw, that water was rushing down Main street faster, larger and more powerfully than two years ago, at least threefold, as Alien Bird eluded to.

Yes it was a lot worse, no comparison and two years ago was no joke either.

[WNCRavensFan]

With all the development in the last 10 years, there is a lot less land up in the hills to soak up the rain water. Howard County government is hungry for the new tax receipts without thinking about the long term environmental effects of all the new development.

I worked in environmental in MD for over a decade and despite the image of us being tree huggers and saving the animals.... the vast majority of what we did concerned human health. Like 95% of it. There is a ton of overlap with civil engineering.

[ravens82]

Whoever has property is Ellicott City is going to see their real estate value plummet as this incident repeats itself. As well as see their insurance rates go up. Get out while you can people.

The historic district/Main St. area is definitely a very at-risk area for flooding. Property/insurance values in that area will surely be affected. But Ellicott City is fairly spread out, and most other areas did not see anything even close to the the flood waters rushing down Main St. I may be biased when I say it's a fantastic place to live, but I'm pretty confident property values won't be affected much in the town overall.

[The Excellector]

Insurance for that area is already through the roof, from what I've heard, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[bst3975]

A long standing problem:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.b4e5545fd417

[cvilleRaven]

Insurance for that area is already through the roof, from what I've heard, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Until July 2016, I owned a townhouse that was in the Maiden Choice Run flood plain - the one that runs right down the middle of Frederick Rd. inside the beltway. We were required to carry flood insurance. With a $5,000 deductible and structure-only coverage, it was around $2,000 per year. Flood insurance in a class A flood plain (100-year, no base flood elevation determined) is outrageously expensive.

We were finally able to sell that house (we bought in April 2008, right before the market blew up, and lost some $35,000 on the house) and move to the other side of Catonsville. I now have a single-family house with a yard (not exaggerating) 50 times the size of what I had in the townhouse, and my mortgage payment went up less than $100 including taxes and insurance.

That half of Old Ellicott City is only in a 500 year flood plain (go look at the map) is a joke. Without Howard County addressing the serious runoff problem further up the hill around old EC, nothing should be rebuilt. Otherwise, it's just going to happen again within 5 years (and that's still a conservative estimate).

[The Excellector]

Okay, thank you for the clarification.

[cvilleRaven]

Oh, and here's the other fun part about flood insurance. Residential coverage is limited to a $250,000 dwelling policy, regardless of the actual cost of rebuilding the structure. You have a $500,000 rebuild cost in your standard homeowner's policy? Flood insurance (which is all through FEMA) is capped at $250,000 (that number may have been adjusted for inflation since 2016, but I somehow doubt that).

I'm not sure how that works for business properties.

[ravenfever]

Insurance for that area is already through the roof, from what I've heard, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Have to remember that EC zip code runs all the way out to near Turf Valley to the west and to Columbia to the south, so it is an expansive area that Ellicott City covers, most of the damage was mainly in historical EC. Just like any other natural disaster we all end up paying with higher insurance rates.