After the July 2016 tragedy, women of Main Street share their stories
Two sisters searched for each other as the flood waters surged
Text by Halima Aziza and Amanda Loudin Photography by Mary C. Gardella
December 2016/January 2017
Twins Katie and Sarah Huber were both working on Main Street on July 30 – Katie at Tersiguel’s restaurant and 
Sarah at Sweet Elizabeth Jane boutique. Their story of that night filled with drama, including Sarah’s heart-stopping fear that one of her colleagues was lost in the flood. But as the water receded, the sisters joyfully reunited.
The 21-year-olds have worked on Main Street since they were teenagers. While the restaurant job was Katie’s first in Ellicott City, Sarah had held jobs at the now defunct Diamondback Tavern and Hut Craft.
Katie recently completed culinary school at Stratford University, while Sarah will graduate from Community College of Baltimore County in the spring with a degree in business management. The sisters knew that their respective experience would help prepare them for careers after completing school. Their jobs on Main Street changed them forever, though in ways they would never have anticipated.
The night of the flood, both Katie and Sarah were at work – Katie at the top of the hill on Main Street and Sarah closer to the Patapsco River as the rain began to fall.
At Tersiguel’s, Katie noticed the rain begin to pick up. By 8:30 p.m., the downpour had turned Main Street into a river. After she texted their mother that Ellicott City was flooding, Katie received a short, frantic call on the restaurant phone from Sarah saying that the windows had come out at Sweet Elizabeth Jane and merchandise was flowing out of the store. But that was the last Katie heard from her twin. She began to worry and called a few other Sweet Elizabeth Jane employees, but none answered. Katie went to the restaurant’s basement, where water had started to bleed through the walls, and tried to bail out water with her manager. But as water continued to flow into the lower level, they gave up. “The current came through the basement window like a waterfall,” Katie recalls.
Meanwhile, Sarah was engaged in her own drama. The last customer had left Sweet Elizabeth Jane just after 7 p.m. Sarah and her two co-workers, Mina Harrison and Natalie Walterhoefer, stood outside under the awning to take in the specter of the storm and capture the event for SnapChat.
“Is that car moving? Or is it just me?” Sarah asked the others, thinking that the car was somehow inching forward. In fact, the car was floating past them down the street.
The three employees went back inside as the current grew more intense. Wall hangings started to shake. The 2-foot yellow God Save Our Queen sign came crashing down from a side wall. “I remember thinking it was an earthquake,” recalls Sarah. Then water started to seep up from the floorboards. “We didn’t know what to do,” she says.
The apartment above the store was locked, so the women were forced to face the flood head on. The water in the store had risen a few inches above the floor, but because the old building slants forward, the water pushed toward the front doors, breaking the display windows. Merchandise was picked up by the water and started to float away. Sarah and the other two employees began to work their way up the street, against the current. Natalie slipped and disappeared under the water. The other two frantically grabbed and searched, but couldn’t see any sign of their colleague. Sarah and Mina, terrified that their colleague might have drowned, made it six doors down to Tiber Park, where they clung to a fence. An onlooker from a second-story balcony helped them into an upstairs apartment.
“I have to call Katie,” Sarah blurted, as soon as she was safe. But no one in the room could get cell service, so they were also unable to report losing track of Natalie.
By most accounts, the water receded almost as quickly as it came. With the threat of more danger from gas leaks and the wooden stairs washed away, the refugees in the upstairs apartment had to break down the door to another apartment to make it back to street level.
Sarah took off toward Tersiguel’s. In the meantime, her sister Katie had gone to look for her. Katie was on Main Street, blindly calling out for her twin, and Sarah came running.
The two clung to each other in a tearful reunion.
Katie found her car still parked where she had left it – though it was filled with mud and silt. They later learned that Sarah’s co-worker, Natalie, although badly injured, had survived.
Several days after the flood, Katie and Sarah went down to the Patapsco River. They found Sweet Elizabeth Jane clothes floating in the water and strung from the trees.
They took some of the dresses home and washed them, Sarah says, and they seemed as good as new. Rebuilding Main Street has not been as easy as washing those dresses, but the town is well on its way. The sisters were happy to finally return to work in the fall. *
– H.A.
