Ellicott City was devastated by flash flooding from a massive two hours rainstorm on Sunday, just two years after a similar event forced the historic city in Howard County to rebuild much of its Main Street.

Murky brown water ripped through Main Street the epicenter of flooding in the region in the late afternoon, submerging cars and businesses’ first floors for nearly two hours. By nightfall, floodwaters had begun to recede. The cycle replayed scenes from 2016: customers stranded in restaurants, storefronts destroyed and cars overturned.

Gov. Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency and directed the Maryland Emergency Management Agency to assist in Ellicott City’s recovery.

That July 2016 storm cost the historic mill town tens of millions of dollars in damage and lost business. And the damage was similar Sunday, with many of the same storefronts along Main Street including the former Caplan’s Department Store gutted once again.

As of midnight, BGE reported that 1,411 Howard County customers were still without power, compared with 1,964 in Baltimore City and Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Harford and Carroll counties combined. The provider predicted extended outages of gas and electric service in areas of heavy flooding until equipment could be examined and possibly rebuilt.

A little more than two weeks ago, Hogan announced that the state and county had been awarded more than $1 million by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund projects aimed at reducing the flood risk in the areas surrounding Main Street. At the time, he called it an “important step in the rebirth of downtown Ellicott City.”

At a previous news conference, Kittleman had announced that 96 percent of businesses were back and more than 20 new ones had opened in the Main Street area. Now many of them will be forced to recover and rebuild once again — or cut their losses and close or move elsewhere.