People on lower Main Street, whose basements Lee filled with multiple feet of water, said they were thankful the storm wasn't as bad as Agnes. Last year, when Tropical Storm Lee drenched the area with an estimated 10 inches of rain and caused flooding once more in historic Ellicott City, it was Agnes people spoke of. While the legacies of other great floods in the area, including those in 1868, 19, have largely faded, many people who lived through Agnes are still around and remember its wrath. Today, 40 years later, Agnes is remembered for its power and scope, and remains a key benchmark for local disasters. Officers with the Howard County Police Department logged 4,467 hours during the week of the storm, according to the Times Newspapers account and other reports. The state issued warnings for people to boil their water and President Richard Nixon declared the state a disaster area. Agnes forced some 900 residents to evacuate their homes, left more than 700 residents homeless for a period of time, and damaged more than 175 homes and dozens of businesses, some of which were completely washed away.Įlectricity and phone service were knocked out for thousands, millions of gallons of sewage spilled into waterways from disturbed pipes and plants in Savage and elsewhere. Howard County was turned into a 'veritable island' of devastation because so many bridges were knocked out, according to a popular retrospective account of the storm published in 1972 by The Times Newspapers.

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