When the dumpsters began to float, Heather Owens and her fiancé, who were waiting out a summer storm in an Old Ellicott City parking lot, realized they needed to leave.
Aiming to escape the rising water, Joseph “Joe” Blevins drove down Main Street, but it was too late. The floodwaters lifted Owens’ Honda Civic and carried it into the Patapsco River.
Afraid for their lives, they rolled down their windows and pulled themselves out. The raging river grabbed and tossed Owens, but she clutched a tree branch. She looked back and saw Blevins being swept down the river.
It was no typical summer storm that evening of July 30, 2016, in Ellicott City. Six inches of rain dumped into the steep-sided valley above the old mill town, overwhelming small waterways, turning Main Street into a cascade and causing the Patapsco River to rise over 13 feet. Experts called it a 1-in-1,000 rain event.
Thursday marks a decade since the deadly flood. Three lives were lost, two swept away by the deluge and another, a shop owner, who died weeks later during the cleanup.
Allan Kittleman, who was Howard County’s executive during the flood, visits Main Street every July 30 to think about the lives lost.
“I don’t want to forget what people had to go through and what people did,” Kittleman said.
He credits the community for how it worked together in the aftermath to bring Ellicott City back.
“It’s not just Ellicott City’s main street,” Kittleman said, “it’s Howard County’s main street.”
From coworkers to tragedy
Owens met Blevins while they worked at the University of Maryland Global Campus. They started as friends and began dating in 2011.
Blevins introduced Owens to Virginia Tech football. The two took annual trips to Blacksburg, Virginia, to cheer the Hokies.
They also spent a lot of time in Ellicott City, from sipping margaritas at La Palapa Grill & Cantina to watching hockey games at The Phoenix. They loved to sift through records and bring Blevins’ children to visit the shops, especially the E.C. Pops popcorn emporium.
The evening of the flood, they’d gone to see “Star Trek Beyond” at a Laurel movie theater. On the drive home to Windsor Mill, Blevins, who’d grown obsessed with Pokémon Go, suggested they stop in Ellicott City to hunt for the virtual creatures. The augmented reality mobile game had launched that month, becoming an overnight global phenomenon.
“Look, it seems like a hotbed for finding Pikachu,” Owens recalled Blevins saying.
It began to storm on their way there. They arrived around 7:30 p.m. and parked in Lot D to wait out the rain, which would not let up.
When they left, they turned down Main Street to cross the bridge over the Patapsco at the base of town. They drove into a rising river.
As the car began to float, Owens screamed, but Blevins, 38, remained calm. She always could count on his composure in an intense situation.
By the time Owens pulled herself out of the river and spied Blevins being sucked downstream, she’d traveled roughly half a mile down the Patapsco.
Owens walked uphill until she found a house and knocked on the door. The people there let her in. She showered, put on fresh clothes and called her family.
An ambulance took Owens to what was then Howard County General Hospital, where she told authorities about Blevins around midnight. She received antibiotics and learned her jaw was broken, prompting a move to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore.
She recalls that ride vividly.
“The sun was coming up, and I just knew at that point that Joe hadn’t contacted anyone, that he was gone,” Owens said. “I knew he wasn’t with us anymore.”
Searchers found his body near Ilchester Road, about 2 miles downriver from Old Ellicott City.
When a police officer came to her hospital room to deliver the news, Owens burst into tears.
Blevins and Jessica Watsula, 35, died in the rushing waters that night.
A Pennsylvania resident, Watsula went out for dinner with family at Portalli’s Italian restaurant in the historic district. Caught in the flood on Main Street as they left, she clung to a light post until she was swept away.
Blevins had three children; Watsula left behind a 10-year-old daughter.
Weeks later, John Pacylowski, 67, owner of Precious Gifts on Main Street, died when he fell from scaffolding behind his building as he worked on repairs.
After the flood, Owens’ identical twin sister, Holly, moved in with her for a year. Owens wrote a eulogy for Blevins’ funeral in Winchester, Virginia, but her mouth was wired shut. Her sister delivered it for her.
A decade later
Owens, 43, still misses Blevins.
“There’s a lot of things I’ve done that I wanted to share with him, and I’m sure he’s watching, laughing at me with some of the mistakes I’ve made,” Owens said. “It’s been a bit of a rocky road, but I’ve come to the point where there’s this healing period that’s about to take place over the next decade or so for me.”
She’s supported by family, friends and her fiancée, Joshua Reisig, a mutual friend of hers and Blevins. She still works in higher education, recently accepting a position at Salisbury University.
Blevins would be proud of her, she said, to see how far she’s come.
And she remains a huge Virginia Tech supporter, doing her best to attend games. Since 2017, Owens has run the Hokie 5K race every September in Blevins’ honor.
Blevins’ oldest child, Hailey Baker, 26, feels closest to her dad when she drives. She spent a lot of time with him in the car when he picked her up in Virginia every other weekend and they’d listen to “divorced dad rock, pop-punk and heavy metal,” with some Broadway musicals such as “Wicked” mixed in. They played guess the song and guess the artist, and they had long talks.
Now married with two children, Baker longs for her dad to be a grandparent. Her two children “would be his entire world,” she said. Baker named her older child Hannah Jo to honor him.
In the past five years or so, Owens has become more comfortable talking about that July night. It helps her keep Blevins’ memory alive and to speak up on the importance of efforts to lessen future floods in Ellicott City.
Flood mitigation is coming slowly. The county’s Ellicott City Safe and Sound Plan, its largest public works project, includes an 18-foot, milelong tunnel under the town to divert stormwater from Main Street into the Patapsco River. However, the now $350 million project is over budget and years behind schedule.
Owens is happy about the tunnel progress but wants to make sure that, when the work is done, it’s maintained to help prevent floods.
A year after the flood, two trees were planted in Lot D in memory of Blevins and Watsula. Owens often visits Blevins’ tree to talk and feel close to him. She and Baker normally go on the anniversary, but this year both have to work. Owens doesn’t mind the distraction, given the heaviness of the 10-year mark.
“The tree makes me feel really connected to him because I feel like he’s here and not in Winchester,” Owens said.
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