Island once again copes with storm’s tidal surge

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN With the cable out Monday morning, John Helldorfer passes the time in his garage working on his bicycle on Thomas Road on St. George Island. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN Adam Riphon of the Maryland State Highway Administration works to clear washed up sand from Piney Point Road on St. George Island on Monday morning. Parts of the island were submerged with up to four feet of water above high tide the night before.

John Helldorfer and his wife had spent the day with their son in College Park, and weren’t expecting to see police cars in Piney Point blocking off access to the island late that night.

‘‘We came down at 11 o’clock, and had no idea,” he said.

The couple spent the night at a motel in Lexington Park. On Monday morning, Helldorfer was working on a bicycle in the garage of his home off Thomas Road, covered over in many places by at least a half-foot of water. His cable television and Internet service both were out.

‘‘It’s either this,” he said as he worked on the bike, ‘‘or clean the house.”

It was perhaps the typical response by St. George Islanders to a tidal surge, pushed onto the land by high winds in rough weather that also brought heavy rain. Helldorfer said he found evidence that the water stood three inches high in his garage at one point, but little serious damage was visible this time on the island as residents with trucks and sport-utility vehicles went about their day.

Across the road, Dave Norris said the water accumulating and remaining in the roadside ditches didn’t reflect a design flaw, but simply the reality of the terrain.

‘‘There’s no place for this to drain. The elevation is so low to begin with,” Norris said. ‘‘When the tide’s up, the ditches can’t drain.”

Second District volunteer firefighters in Valley Lee were among the first emergency crews summoned to respond on Sunday evening, to a fallen tree at Thomas Road’s intersection with the island’s main thoroughfare. Road crews also began a long night of joining firefighters in the county as more trees fell, in places like Fresh Pond Neck Road in Ridge and St. Jerome’s Neck Road in Dameron, Medley’s Neck Road near Leonardtown and Chaptico Park. Utility poles and their lines fell in locations such as Poplar Ridge Road in Hermanville and Indian Bridge Road in California.

By 9 p.m., when wires and a tree fell across Hillview Drive in Golden Beach, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative employees had a list of locations where their help was needed.

A tree fell across the rear of a building on Gloucester Court in Lexington Park, county officials report, and the calls for firefighters’ services soon expanded to isolated evacuations at locations including Chesapeake Bay Drive in Scotland and a trailer on Ball Point Road on St. George Island, where a fire chief told 911 dispatchers that the roadway was impassible.

Two-to-three feet of water covered Old Breton Beach Road at Medley’s Neck when Leonardtown fire and rescue crews were sent there, with a raft, shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday to assist a handicapped person at a flooding home, county officials report, but no one wanted to be evacuated. The volunteers made sure everyone was out of the high water, and accounted for.

On the island, 82-year-old Tynan Poe once again rode out the weather from safe inside his trailer home off Thomas Road.

The wind ‘‘was heavy,” he said, and ‘‘was coming out of the east. That will shove the tide up.”

Poe’s electrical power went out for about an hour at 10 pm., but neither that nor the rising water caused him to leave his bed. ‘‘I never even got up to look,” he said.