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This story was updated at 5:27 p.m. Sept. 9, 2011.

Heavy rains throughout Prince George’s shut down roads and stranded residents, including residents in one neighborhood who were helped from their homes with bulldozers and inflatable boats, officials said Thursday.

The Prince George's County Administration Building and the county courthouse in Upper Marlboro flooded and were closed, said Scott Peterson, spokesman for Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D). County government is still open and Prince George's County Public Schools opened on time.

As of 5 p.m. Thursday there had been no decision on whether the county buildings would reopen Friday, Scott said.

Water has receded enough to get into the ground floor of the County Administration Building and begin the drying process, he said. A contractor will be on site at 7 a.m. Friday to check on electrical outlets and switches. There was no damage to the courthouse or courthouse annex, Peterson said.

Crews are working around the clock to clear roads as best they could, said Susan Hubbard, spokeswoman for the county’s Department of Public Works and Transportation, adding it was too early to estimate when roads might reopen.

After-school and evening activities Thursday at Prince George’s County Public Schools have been canceled, along with Back to School nights, which will be rescheduled. There are no reports of damages to any schools, officials said, but schools will wait to make a decision on whether open until Friday morning.

This morning, the county opened Emergency Operations Center in Landover Hills to monitor the situation across the county and closed at 4:30 p.m., Peterson said. DPWT will continue to respond to reports of flooded roadways this evening, Peterson said.

The center serves as a temporary base of operations for county department heads and public safety officials, and also was used after the Aug. 23 earthquake and during Hurricane Irene last month.

Flooding, particularly in Upper Marlboro, is “extensive and it’s not getting any better,” Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department spokesman Mark Brady said.

Firefighters have helped a number of people throughout the county stranded on flooded roadways, and the majority of roads in to and out of Upper Marlboro are closed because of flooding, he said.

A full list of county and state road closures in the county is provided at the bottom of this story.

Residents on Peerless Avenue in Upper Marlboro have been evacuated via bulldozers and inflatable boats, Brady said.

The flooding caused a section of Brandywine Road between Mattawoman Drive and Missouri Avenue to collapse, which will keep the road closed “in the long term,” said Maryland State Highway Administration spokeswoman Kellie Boulware. She did not have a timeline for when SHA will be able to reopen the section of roadway.

Hazmat crews are examining the area around Marlboro Tire, an auto repair shop on Marlboro Pike, which Brady said was “well under water,” to make sure that no petroleum products or fluids seeped out.

Marlboro Tire owner Mike Kress said that although he was able to get some of the shop’s equipment onto lifts, he still anticipates a financial loss of “several tens of thousands of dollars.”

“We lost several computers, and several pieces of high tech testing equipment and other tools,” he said. “If the water hits anything electronic, it’s instantly corrosive, so there’s no salvaging it.”

Kress had been measuring the rise in water from the stream behind his shop. The water level’s rise sped up substantially between midnight and 3 a.m, he said. At its peak, his shop was filled with about five feet of water, but has begun to recede slightly, Kress said.

“At about 12:30 last night, it was rising about two inches per hours, so I said, ‘I’m good, we’ve got about 28 inches to go,’” so he went home to rest, Kress said.

“When I came back at quarter to 3 [a.m.], it had jumped several feet higher ... and in a 15-minute period of time, it went up six inches. So I had about 20 minutes to get all of the computers, customers’ cars and equipment out of harm’s way.”

County Councilman Mel Franklin (D-Dist. 9) of Upper Marlboro said this bout of flooding, along with flooding after Hurricane Irene, puts a spotlight on what is a recurring problem not only for Upper Marlboro, but also the county as a whole.

“As you see today, [the flooding] is shutting the main [County Administration Building] down, and interfering with our doing the business of residents in the county,” Franklin said. “We have to figure out how to address this recurring flooding issue. ... We could see the flooding problem in southern Prince George’s get worse as the years go on.”

Franklin said he plans to organize a meeting with Upper Marlboro town commissioners and representatives from DER and DPWT to try to figure out how to solve “or at least mitigate” flooding in the town.

Rain is expected to continue throughout the day, and a flash flood warning is in effect for the county until 8:30 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

Pepco reported 81 Prince George's residents without power and BGE reported about 101 county customers without power at about 5 p.m.

A number of other county and state roads remained closed because of flooding as of 4 p.m. Thursday, Peterson said.

Upper Marlboro roads include Crain Highway at Croom Station Road, Crain Highway at Marlboro Pike, Landover Road north of Marlboro Pike, Water Street at Pennsylvania Avenue, Old Crain Highway and Pennsylvania Avenue, the Pennsylvania Avenue exit for Ritchie Marlboro Road, Old Marlboro Pike at Ritchie Marlboro Road, eastbound Central Avenue at the ramp to northbound Largo Road, Woodyard Road at Rosaryville Road, Croom Road at Croom Station Road and Pennsylvania Avenue at the bridge on the border of Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties .

Other closed roads include: in Bowie — Largo Road at Whitehouse Road and Largo Road at Watkins Park Drive; in Lanham — Lanham Road at Duvall Street; in Clinton — Floral Park Road at Piscataway Road, the 11700 block of Brandywine Road; in Fort Washington — Livingston Road at Taylor Avenue; in Accokeek — the 15000 block of Livingston Road; in Baden — Baden-Naylor Road between Molley Berry and Brooks Church Roads, McKendree and Route 373 and Mister Road in Baden; in Brandywine — Accokeek Road at McKendree Road, Floral Park Road between Winbrook Drive and Danville Road and South Springfield Road at Accokeek Road; and in Laurel, Sunnyside Avenue between Edmonston Road and Tucker Street, Contee Road at Mayfair Drive, and the ramp on northbound I-95 toward eastbound U.S. 50.

The State Highway Administration reports road closures because of high water on Route 1 at Ritz Way in Laurel; U.S. 301 between Marlboro Pike and Pennsylvania Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue at Woodyard Road in Upper Marlboro; and Route 202 at White House Road in Largo.

The following roads have been reopened: Brooke Lane at Brown Station Road, the 3000 block of Brown Station Road, and Brown Station Road at Fenway Lane, all in Bowie.

ewagner@gazette.net

dleaderman@gazette.net