It may not look like much now, but workers have spent two days cleaning up in Sykesville after a deluge swamped the bottom of Main Street.
"We didn't have anything from around 5:00 to 6:30, and by seven o'clock, it just started flooding up," said Rico Liberto with the Sykesville Public Works Department.
Ridia Dearie had just left her popular Baldwin's Station restaurant when the sky opened up.
"I just got home,” said Dearie, “I was drenched, because I was cleaning up in the rain and got home, took a shower, turned on the news, heartbroken for Ellicott City and then my employee who lives next door took a video."
The video shows the convergence of the rising waters of the Patapsco River with the runoff from the hills above the town that flooding the parking lot, submerging cars in the process and leaving three feet of water in the restaurant's basement.
"In 21 years of business, we've never flooded like this," said Dearie, who credits the Sykesville-Freedom District Fire Department with clearing the drains in the parking lot, pumping the water out of the basement of the restaurant and helping to clean out her wine store, The Vine on Main, which also flooded just across the street.
"The good news,” said Dearie, “we lost all the cardboard boxes that wine comes in, but the wine bottles are good. We didn't lose a lot of inventory. Again, we had friends and family that came over and everyone lent a hand, which is why we love Sykesville---small town, everyone knows everyone else. Word got around and we had so much help. So we're much better than we could have been."
