After Wall Collapse in Ellicott City, a 'Temporary Fix' (VIDEO)

Crushed cars still sit under a pile of rubble that was once a retaining wall on Mulligans Hill Lane. 

On Friday, on top of the rubble, there was also a backhoe.

“The cars don’t really feel it anymore,” said Howard County Public Works Deputy Director Mark Deluca. He stood a few feet from one of the cars’ owners, who snapped pictures as the last sliver of her sliver Mazda was buried under rock. 

The after days of rain caused . The crushed cars may have saved a building owned by St. Paul’s Church – stopping the flow of rock and earth just a foot or so from where the building sits.

“If you pull the cars out, the rest of the wall could come down,” Deluca said, and with it, the earth that abuts the stone building and, ultimately, the building itself.

“What we’re trying to do is an emergency, temporary fix,” Deluca said. In the background, dump trucks and backhoes worked to push the crumbled rock on top of the cars, reinforcing the slope of debris. 

“We’re trying to stabilize the wall, or what’s left of it,” Deluca said, “and the slope that it created so that the wall doesn’t fail more” and the slope doesn’t give.

This solution, he said, would be temporary so that residents could get to their homes on the street. In the mean time, designers and engineers will work to create and implement a permanent fix.