Last night we arrived in Ellicott City
just as the road barriers were being taken down. After almost four days of
being cut off from the other side of the river, Frederick Road was reopened and downtown
began its own road to recovery.
Shortly after parking, we ran into the county exec as he was
walking towards the railroad underpass where Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr lost
their lives just after midnight on Tuesday. Ken looked a bit tired but was generally upbeat about the how quickly the clean up had progressed. He told me that he
had read the To2C blog post about the businesses in Oella and, to spread some inter county love, he had made
plans to cross over to the Trolley Stop and have a beer with Baltimore County
Councilman, Tom Quirk.
We also talked a bit about Lance Armstrong. The seven time
Tour de France winner has been a longtime supporter of the Ulman Cancer Fund.
Ken pointed out that the news media was getting it wrong when they said that
the USADA had stripped Lance of his Tour de France victories. “They don’t have
jurisdiction over that,” he said.
After leaving Ken we walked up Main Street and noted the impromtu shrine
that had been set up in Tiber
Park
Though the road is reopen, the clean up is continuing and it
will still be awhile before parking lots B & C are reopened. In the meantime,
for this weekend at least, the exec has made parking free in all the remaining
lots.
As it has done in the past after other disasters have ravaged the old mill town, Ellicott City has
picked itself up and brushed itself off and is moving on.
This morning, another CSX train rolled through town once again, albeit a bit slower than usual.
Big Boys Media Note: In todays Washington Post, Ashley Halsey III and
Jenna Johnson reconstructed the sequence of events leading to the tragic train derailment beginning with
the departure of CSX Train U813 from Grafton ,
West Virginia
