I'm so sorry for what you're going through there today. KELLY: Mark Hemmis, thank you for taking the time. So we will - we'll do everything we can to help them in their transition until we figure out what's next. Yeah, it's difficult to, you know, see the people that we've cared about for so long and knowing the time they're going to be going through in the period coming up. Twenty out of 22 employees came back after the first flood. KELLY: It sounds like what's keeping you going on what must be a really hard day is looking after the people who work with you at the restaurant, trying to take care of them. I imagine almost all of town will be closed for a significant period of time. Just because we're at the bottom doesn't mean we get it the worst. Some places will get it worse than others with the geography of the town. HEMMIS: Oh, I think Ellicott City is pretty much a complete loss right now, yeah. KELLY: Do you have any idea whether other restaurants, other businesses, you know, on your block are affected in the same way, going through the same thing? Right now I'm just trying to arrange - I mean, obviously it's a holiday today, but, you know, we have a payroll. KELLY: Difficult to hear you use that word, staying afloat. But, I mean, my primary focus right now is to, you know, ensure the stability for my employees, try to get them jobs and try to assist them in paying their bills and, you know, staying afloat. Yeah, I've owned the Phoenix for almost 17 years. I've been in the restaurant business since I was 14. HEMMIS: I'm really not sure where I'm at with that. I wonder - it feels too soon to ask you this, but how are you feeling about the prospect of rebuilding again? Yeah, so we're - you know, we're coming up on a year and a half now. We opened - reopened on January 30, 2017. It took us six months to the day to get back open. So you had only managed to rebuild and been open for - what? - like 18 months. It looks - I don't know if I can quantify better or worse, but it looks horrible. And I got a glimpse inside the first floor yesterday. So we redid the plumbing and the electrical and all the sewer lines, and then rebuilt, redid the floors and replaced all the refrigerators and tables and chairs. We lost everything on the first floor and the basement. We were closed for six months with similar catastrophic damage. KELLY: I mentioned that yesterday's flood was the second thousand-year flood that Ellicott City has experienced, the last one in 2016. ![]() The water ended up being 6, 7, 8 feet deep coming down Main Street. ![]() And once it came over the curb, we brought all the customers up to the second floor. HEMMIS: It was - it started out as - it pooled around the sides of the road, you know, a couple inches deep on the curb, and then it covered the road. KELLY: And what did it look like, I mean, when you say the water was coming down Main Street? Kind of a lull in the mid- to late afternoon, and that's when the waters really started coming down Main Street. Did you have customers in the restaurant as the rain started to fall? I wonder if you can start by just telling me what yesterday was like. He owns Phoenix Emporium, a tavern-style restaurant in downtown Ellicott City. And now, as floodwaters recede, residents and business owners are assessing the damage. Governor Larry Hogan has declared a state of emergency. For the second time in two years, the city experienced what has been called a thousand-year flood. Flash floods tore through the historic downtown. Eight inches of rain fell in just six hours. At one point, Ramsay appeared before them to loud cheers.īusiness owners with shops backing up to the parking lot have said they welcomed the temporary inconvenience for the chance at needed upgrades to Main Street, an area still rebuilding after catastrophic floods in July 2016 and May 2018 caused severe damage and killed three people.For a while yesterday, Main Street in Ellicott City, Md., looked less like a street than a raging river. Other volunteers on the set wore plastic ponchos, or both.Īt various times throughout the day, volunteers spread out along Main Street cleaning benches, sweeping the streets and laying mulch. This time, he was joined by more than 100 volunteers from Ellicott City and Howard County, some were wearing green T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Dig Plant Soak Repeat,” the same shirts worn by area nonprofit environmental group Howard EcoWorks. He and his crew returned Tuesday for yet more secretive filming. Ramsay, 53, who rose to cooking stardom in London and is known for flashing a fiery temper and snapping wit as much as his kitchen skills, was first spotted Monday in Ellicott City.
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