By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The equivalent of about 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of sewage spewed into a Chesapeake Bay tributary from a water treatment plant in Savage, Md., as superstorm Sandy swept past the Washington area Monday night.
A train hauling coal derailed on a bridge in this city's historic district, killing two college students who had been drinking together and hanging out on the tracks. Nearly two dozen railroad cars flipped over, including some that fell onto vehicles in a parking lot below the bridge, officials said.
Firefighters were among those who had to be rescued Wednesday as storms flooded roads, trapping cars in rushing water and filling basements in a region still cleaning up from Hurricane Irene less than two weeks ago.
"Many of those train cars fell onto automobiles, literally fell onto automobiles with the coal," Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said. "So you have massive piles of coal and heavy train cars on top of automobiles."
