Record rainfall soaked the Maryland suburbs overnight and officials were bracing for more for the rest of the week.
The rains knocked out power, closed roads and left dozens of people in peril throughout Sunday into Monday night.
More than 3,100 Montgomery County and some 1,500 Prince George’s County homes had no power Monday morning.
Pepco construction crews switched to restoration work and additional shift workers were hurrying to get work done during the day, Pepco spokesman Bob Dobkin said.
Regular company and contract crews were handling the work in Maryland, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. spokeswoman Linda Foy said.
Officials used boats to evacuate about 40 people from the Candy Cane Park in Chevy Chase, and another 28 people had to be rescued from their stranded cars throughout Montgomery County.
One of the evacuees was Zena Rogers, who watched flood waters creep up her Hyattsville street during the early hours of Monday morning.
“It’s like a scene from the Titanic,” Rogers said, “how the water rose up.”
Rescue crews in boats eventually evacuated four people and three pets from Rogers’ house and two people from her sister’s house across the street.
They spent the night at a Red Cross shelter set up in Chillum Elementary School.
Rogers came back to a house with electricity and food still good in her refrigerator. Her sister, Rogers said, was not so lucky.
“They don’t have anything at all,” Rogers said. “The water is just sitting there. Everything is gone. It’s just a total loss.”
Monday afternoon brought more clouds, more rain and little security for Rogers and her family.
“We’re going to sleep in our clothes tonight,” Rogers said. “It makes you nervous, because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The rains were also bad news for commuters into the District. Officials shut down the inbound 12th Street Tunnel throughout Monday. The intersection of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue remained closed Monday as well as sections along Branch Road, streets going into Rock Creek Park, Clinton Street NE, Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE and Minnesota Avenue SE.
With dark clouds continuing to roll across the skies Monday, officials were warning residents to brace for even worse.
“The problem we’ve got right now is the ground is already soaked and if we get any additional rainfall we will get flooding,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Weather Service in Silver Spring. “We could easily have several more inches of rain before we’re out of this.”
Examiner Staff writers Christy Goodman, David Francis, Mike Rupert, Courtney Mabeus, Katie Wilmeth, and Dena Levits contributed to this report.
