It had been about 12 hours since Sunday night's deluge, and except for the seagulls, downtown Crisfield was all but deserted as the tide rose again Monday afternoon.
“It's coming up now. That high tide's at three o'clock,” said Barry Prettyman, watching from the safety of his five story waterfront condo building. “It was over the docks and flowing right into here and the whole parking lot was covered, blowing their white caps in the street.”
The weekend nor’easter wreaked havoc in Ocean City, Rehoboth, and other Atlantic beaches. But the rising tides didn’t skip Crisfield, which has faced perennial flooding problems from the Bay.
Businesses by the water's edge were closed and cars had been moved to whatever higher ground they could find. Signs warned against driving on many side streets. The low-lying areas around Somers Cove and the housing projects were particularly watery, trapping residents.
“If you're already at home and it starts flooding, you're pretty much just stuck where you are,” said James Hodge, a resident in the housing projects. “If you're on the outside, then you can't come in to get anywhere. And my kids hasn't been able to go to school because of the flooding. They shut down school, can't get out to go for work. The transit buses aren't running to get people where they need to go. It's been crazy.”
At the Weathered Porch gift shop, one of the only downtown businesses with its doors open, the owner was mopping up the floor, and not in a good mood.
“I'm working and I'm going to be fine,” she said. “I just need for people to leave me alone, let me do what I got to do.”
And no wonder.
“The street was half a foot to a foot deep,” said Rob Robinson, another condo resident. “I haven't been here for a hurricane, but that was the worst I've ever seen. You can see the tides coming up now. That's just high tide. It happens every day, but it was over the sidewalk. We drove through here and I didn't think we'd get through. Guarantee the water was licking the bottom of the doors.”
Robinson, like other longtime residents, knew about Crisfield's perennial flooding. But he said it was still a night to remember.
“Yeah, I knew it flooded,” Robinson said. “I just never seen anything like that. The pier was covered. Out at the end of the pier where the fishing docks are, they were all underwater. It actually ripped some boards off.”
Brandon Ebaugh, a city public works man, was on the pier trying to replace the boards taken away by the storm. The rising tide was just inches away from the top of the pier, which didn't give him much time.
“The original ones might have been about three and a half inch, but we used four and a half inch screws to replace it with,” he said.
At nearby Janes Island State Park, Mickey and Trisha Sandora, traveling musicians from Missouri, were taken a bit by surprise. “With the full moon, the high tide, and the winds, we waited in a foot of water to hook up to our camper at two o'clock in the morning,” Mickey Sandora said.
By midday Monday, the effects were felt across town, including the law office of veteran Annapolis lawyer, William Chaires.
“Let me show you,” Chaires said, guiding a visitor into his ground floor office. “All the way in here, that's the rug that smells. Oh yeah. I got to get that out of here.” He pointed to mark on the wall nearly a foot above the floor. “The water came all the way up to there.”
Chaires and others around Crisfield have grown used to the high water, if not the slow grinding machinery of government that has yet to find an effective way to remedy the flooding problem.
“By my general calculations, the city lost about a hundred million dollars in grants over the last couple of years,” he said.
Indeed, after a previous $36 million FEMA grant was stalled or canceled, the city has shifted to a phased approach. Phase One is underway, along with a $30 million flood control project in Somers Cove, a state-owned marina.
But when this weekend's nor'easter hit, all that was still pending.
