By William S. Becker*
MILWAUKEE, USA (IDN) – It happened in July 2016. A flash flood roared through Ellicott City, Maryland, killed two people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages to the historic buildings along Main Street. The experts said it was one of those rare 1,000-year flood events. The city set about the job of rebuilding. It takes a long time – often years – for a community to recover from a devastating flood.
Then in May 2018, while Ellicott City was still getting over the 2016 disaster, it happened again, another one of those “extremely rare” 1,000-year floods.