Families returned to their apartments at the Rock Creek Woods residential complex in Rockville on Thursday morning to collect their belongings after heavy rains and flooding caused 150 residents to be evacuated the day before.

Around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, evacuees from two buildings in the apartment complex were forced to find refuge at the Mid County Recreation Center in Silver Spring, a hotel, or a family member’s house. So far, officials believe there is clear evidence that a culvert that runs underneath the buildings became inundated with the large volume of rain that accumulated.

The National Weather Service reported that about 3.3 inches of rain fell in a 60-minute period in Rockville early Wednesday morning, with 2.4 inches falling in just 30 minutes, said Earl Stoddard, Montgomery County’s acting chief administrative officer. The first-floor apartments in one of the buildings were flooded up to the ceiling and second-floor apartments experienced flooding on the floor. Melkin Daniel Cedillo, 19, died while trying to save his mother.

Aaron Wilkerson, his girlfriend and their three-year-old son stood on the sidewalk of the apartment complex Thursday morning with the items they managed to salvage from their first-floor apartment. Blue plastic garbage bags were strewn about the sidewalk, full of clothes and mud-caked shoes, some still leaking flood water. Wilkerson said building managers allowed them 15 minutes to collect their belongings.

“Most of the stuff we couldn’t grab because it was covered in mud and it was displaced everywhere,” said Wilkerson, standing on the sidewalk wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants covered in mud from digging through the apartment for his belongings. “We just grabbed as much stuff as we can.”

Wilkerson — who said he was exhausted — explained how he managed to get his family out of the apartment early Wednesday morning. “I ran out to the living room to see if someone was trying to break in and it was just water rushing in from the patio door,” he said. “[The water] was up to my waist.”

Wilkerson alerted his girlfriend and went to grab his son, whose bed had already flipped over from the flooding. They made their way out by swimming through the patio door. He tried to swim with his son, but says he was taking on too much water and began to drown. Another woman helped save his son and girlfriend, as he began to sink.

“And I thought I wasn’t going to make it because all I saw was white lights… I fell to the ground and I was there for a minute and then I was like, I have a little bit of energy left so with that last bit of energy I just crawled out of the water, but when I got to land I just couldn’t move my body gave out,” Wilkerson explained.

Wilkerson said he and his girlfriend are lucky they still have their jobs at car dealerships as they figure out where they will live. His son was supposed to start pre-school on Friday, but the devastation to their home has left him without a place to go. For now they’re staying at a hotel for a few days before the county’s department of health and human services can help them find a new place to live.

Other residents, like Maria Santos Hernandez and her family, stayed at a relative’s house. On Thursday morning they were standing outside their apartment complex waiting to go in. She says this past year and a half has been difficult for them. Her husband died of COVID-19 last year at the age of 68, she was hospitalized with it, and everyone in her family contracted the virus.

“My heart is in distress,” Hernandez told DCist/WAMU in Spanish while holding back tears. “We’ve suffered a lot… and we’re just tired.”

Hernandez’s neighbors, Maria Parada and her husband, have lived on the second floor for 23 years, and said she’d never seen any flooding like this before.

“We went out to the balcony and heard people screaming for help, but we couldn’t help them,” Parada told DCist/WAMU in Spanish while tearing up. Parada and other family members tried calling 911.

The apartment buildings will be gutted and renovated so residents can move back in, but Parada says she doesn’t know if she wants to live there again.

“Just to go inside today I felt panicked and nervous like it could happen again,” Parada said.

The flooding at the apartments will not be the last Montgomery County experiences, Stoddard said Wednesday; it’s an early indicator of what the county will have to face moving forward.