FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
KLMNO Petworth man abandons van
by Mary Pat Flaherty “I couldn’t drink it. I didn’t
have a paddle. So, yep, I bailed right out of that minivan.” And thus did Bradley Broadus
watch his “really loaded” 2005 Chrysler Town & Country wash away in a flash flood that he saw bearing down on him Thursday morning during his regular-as- clockwork trip through Rock Creek Park in the District. Broadus made for the high ground on Brandywine Street near Broad Branch Road, spotted a nice tall security fence near one of the consulates, pulled himself up, wrapped his arms around a sturdy tree limb and “for about 30 minutes, it seemed, held on and probably looked the fool, a grown man in a tree. A panicked fool.” A panicked fool in a T-shirt with a nifty peace sign on the front.
Broadus, 57, had dropped a friend off at work at American University about 7 a.m. as he does most weekdays and was home- ward bound to Petworth along a route whose every turn he can re- cite. Then, at Brandywine and Broad Branch, he saw water ris- ing from the adjoining stream. He stopped, put it in park and got out in the driving rain to take a look. It looked bad. He got back in, set the emer-
as flash flood sweeps it away At Rock Creek Park, driver clings to tree to avoid ‘wall of water’
gency brake (“which I never do”) and glanced in the rearview mir- ror. “A wall of water” that U.S. Park
Police estimated at 15 feet was headed toward him. From his perch on the fence, Broadus saw the water move the van about five feet, then another “10 or so” and then out of sight. Away went the TV and DVD player and his wallet and a $20 bill he had in a cup holder. The van came to rest about a quarter-mile south. “That water was so loud, you cannot believe it, and the trees whipping around and being pulled along in the water,” Broa- dus said. “I couldn’t see where my van was, but I had a pretty good
S
B5
Bradley Broadus got caught in a flash flood on Brandywine Street near Broad Branch Road.
view of everything else from the fence.”
Broadus said he hovered “about three feet above water passing by under me” as Park Po- lice dealt with other cars that were swept away. An officer spot- ted his light-blue van lodged against supports for a bridge that carries Ross Drive over the creek. The officer broke the window af- ter seeing the car seat that Broa- dus keeps for his grandchildren. But Broadus had been riding
PHOTOS BY DAVID SCHLOSSER/U.S. PARK POLICE Broadus bailed out of his minivan, which was hit by a wall of water and swept a quarter mile south.
alone. Meanwhile, back at the tree, Broadus clambered down as the storm abated and flagged a pass- ing television crew. When they heard his story, “they asked me if my van was silver or blue and when I said yes, they told me po- lice were looking for me and they
knew where it was.” The TV and DVD that had en-
tertained the family on road trips to points as distant as Key West, Fla.? Ruined. His wallet was gone, so Broa- dus spent the rest of the day call- ing banks and credit card compa- nies to cancel accounts.
But the $20? “I got that. About the only thing I did save, and I should put it on the lottery — more than one person said that to me.”
And how did he get home? The tow truck driver, lugging the van behind them.
flahertym@washpost.com
TONI L. SANDYS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Pedestrians cross Dixon Street in Silver Spring as the day’s second round of thunderstorms bears down on the region.
D.C. area struck by another round of violent storms
storms from B1
storms we’ve gotten when you have summer temperatures that are pretty warm and not quite as hot,” he said. The day began ominously. At Reagan National Airport, the temperature was reported as 82 degrees shortly after dawn. The air was steamy, with humidity over 70 percent. And the morning sky over much of the Washington area was dark and still, as if with the pent-up gloom of weeks of heat and irritation. About 7:15 am, the sky erupted in torrential thunderstorms that deluged parts of the area in the midst of the morning rush. Streets flooded. Trees came
crashing down. Power went out. Parts of the Metro system were hobbled, and traffic in some places crawled to a halt amid riv- ers of muddy water.
Rain — an inch and a half in an hour — was the main culprit. It was dumped by a 60-mile-long squall line that reached from just outside Baltimore to the District. Flash floods across the area
stranded motorists atop their cars. More than 100,000 people lost power, local utilities said, and Pepco said repairs could again take days.
At 9 p.m., about 63,000 people were without power. The vast ma- jority were Pepco customers, about 49,300 of them in Mont- gomery, 6,800 in the District and 3,800 in Prince George’s. Domin- ion Virginia Power reported about 2,600 customers without power in Northern Virginia, and BG&E had about 225 outages in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs. Among other things, the morn-
ing’s hour-long deluge brought a tree down on a house in Chevy Chase, showering an infant in a crib with debris. Robert Anderson and his wife,
Betsy, ran upstairs to find Jaymes, their two 2-month-old son, in his crib covered with parts of the tree, the ceiling, and hunks of slate roofing, brick and in- sulation. “I just ran over and started throwing stuff off of him,” Anderson said. He rinsed Jaymes off in a sink, and the boy began to cry. “Okay,” Anderson thought, “crying is probably a good sign.” The baby
— Dan Stillman of the Capital Weather Gang,
“This has been a very extreme summer.”
TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Rescue workers used ladders to free residents from a damaged apartment
JUANA ARIAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Utility worker James Moore removes debris from power lines on Roxanna Road NW in the District.
suffered only minor scrapes. The storm tore a 50-foot hole in the roof of large church in Camp Springs. And it blew down tents at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, where a camel named Matt suffered a head in- jury when struck by downed tree limb. Traffic lights were out across the region. And trees and limbs littered roadways, lawns and houses. There were delays on Metro, as
the Cleveland Park and Forest Glen stations were temporarily closed. There were also delays at local
airports, as aircraft had to wait out the passing squall lines. And roads were closed by high water and fallen debris across the area. In Montgomery County,
stranded motorists were de- scribed as taking to the roofs of their vehicles as muddy water in- undated an area around Veirs Mill Road and Connecticut Av- enue. Canal Road NW became a lake, witnesses said, as did Rhode
Island Avenue in the District and Route 1 in Beltsville.
Shady Grove Adventist Hospi- tal in Rockville had to reschedule surgeries after flooding in its waiting rooms and surgical ser- vices area, and United Medical Center in Southeast Washington had to rely on generators for most of the morning when the hospital lost power for several hours.
In Gaithersburg, rescue work- ers responded to a report of a tree that had fallen through the roof of an apartment building in the 500 block of Frederick Avenue. Workers found that the tree had damaged a common stair- way, so they used 24-foot ladders to rescue residents. No
life-
threatening injuries were report- ed, but two people were taken to a hospital. As the day went on,
BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
amid mounting heat and humid- ity and the still unstable atmos- phere, the second wave of weath- er cooked up and spawned fast- moving storms that galloped across the area from north to south. Forecasters said the “back-
door” cold front that slipped into the area from the northeast and stalled here was partly to blame for Thursday’s unsettled atmos-
phere. Friday was expected to be
cloudy, with a chance of showers, but not so stormy, and Saturday, partly sunny and cooler.
ruanem@washpost.com
Staff writers Lori Aratani, Mary Pat Flaherty, Hamil R. Harris, Dan Morse, Rick Rojas, Michael Rosenwald, Kevin Sieff and Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.
building, above, in Gaithersburg. No life- threatening injuries were reported, but two people were taken to a hospital.
Officer Crystal Volk of the Park Police blocks off part of Sligo Creek Parkway in Montgomery County after violent
thunderstorms caused severe flooding.
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