One of the few things that the residents of Severn Heights could do yesterday was wait - and keep their generators running.
They waited for Anne Arundel County public works crews to clear their roads of fallen trees. They waited for BGE workers to replace toppled utility poles. And they waited for electricity, cable and phone lines to be restored to the neighborhood.
And they may still be waiting today .
Some of Wednesday's ferocious storms - only one of which, in Calvert County, qualified as an official tornado - had blown off the Severn River and through the backyards of residents of this small waterfront community. Several healthy, towering trees, some more than 100 feet tall, were sheared in half or felled as a wall of thunderstorms stretching from Virginia to north of Baltimore sped by.
"It sounded like a bomb going off," said Steve Andrews, a Severn Heights resident whose house was hit by two poplar trees. "It shook the whole house. ... I've done a lot of crazy things in my life, and I've never been so scared. I thought we were going to die."
More than 190,000 BGE customers lost power during the storms, though by yesterday afternoon all but 29,000 had electricity restored. Schools in Montgomery and Prince George's County were closed, as were seven schools in Howard County and three in Carroll County because of power outages.
Only one of Maryland's storms was officially classified as a tornado, according to National Weather Service forecasters in Sterling, Va. That twister touched down in Chesapeake Beach in Calvert County, where maximum winds reached 85 mph on a path that was 75 yards wide and 1.5 miles long.
Five people were injured there, and 14 dwellings, including a decades-old restaurant, were damaged. Nine families were displaced, including some who were living at a waterside condominium development.
The roof flew off Chesapeake Beach's Trader's Seafood, Steak and Ale, a restaurant whose building dates to the 1950s. "All the doors blew open, and we heard a big boom like a big freight train," said Larry Middledorf, 37, who was working in the kitchen when the storm hit. "It came so quickly. In 30 seconds it was gone. Then we all came outside and saw the devastation."
Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold toured Severn Heights yesterday and said it appeared that the neighborhood had been hit by "tornado-like" winds. "The good news is, no fatalities or injuries reported," Leopold said.
