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Derailed train cars could burn for days
Saturday, October 21, 2006

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette
Flames continue to rise today out of the scene of last night's rail car derailment that triggered explosions, fire and evacuations along the Beaver River in New Brighton.
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J. Monroe Butler II, Post-Gazette photos
Flames shooting out of wrecked tankers last night after the derailment on a rail trestle.
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Flaming jets rise from some of the wrecked tanker cars authorities said were carrying ethanol.
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Officials estimated that as many as eight of the rail tanker cars were engulfed in flames after the wreck.
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Fiery blooms rose off the scene into the early morning.
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Twenty-four tank cars that derailed last night with as much as 300,000 gallons of ethanol in them continued to burn alongside a Beaver County river today.

About 100 residents of New Brighton remained stranded from their homes while emergency officials pondered how to contain the explosive blaze.

"We've been monitoring -- having a kind-of-wait-and-see attitude -- to see if the fire will stabilize and self extinguish," said Larry Morley, borough manager in New Brighton.

Mr. Morley said several blocks of the town's lower end, along the Beaver River, were evacuated last night after part of the 80-car Norfolk Southern train ran off the rails just inside the borough, dumping several tank cars into the river as others burst into flames and sent a rolling ball of fire hundreds of feet into the air.

"I felt the explosion. My house did one of those shakes,like lightning just struck the front yard," Mr. Morley said.

Emergency officials said the fire could burn for days.

The accident obliterated a stretch of railroad track along the Norfolk Southern main line, closing a section of the line used by 50 to 70 freight trains daily, as well as Amtrak passenger service to Pittsburgh and the East Coast.

Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband likened the effect on traffic to last month's landslide in Kilbuck that covered the tracks as well as Route 65.

"The effect from the landslide, you could just recycle that," he said.

Mr. Husband said the train was bound from a Midwestern refinery--one emergency worker identified it as the Shell Motiva plant in Houston, Texas--and was en route to a shipping point in New Jersey.

Ethanol has become a major supplement for gasoline and other fuels.

Intially, emergency workers were kept back by heavy flames as the tankers burst into flames after the derailment, which occurred about 10:30 last night.

New Brighton Police Chief Chuck Vanfossan flew over the scene in a helicopter this morning and said he could see one tanker car bulging from the building pressure inside.

An aerial look at the accident showed cars piled atop each other, with at least three bobbing in the river and two others on the riverbank. One car continued to burn furiously this afternoon as four others smoldered.

U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods, whose district includes New Brighton, said emergency management officials told her they hope to carry out a controlled burn of the ethanol by pumping oxygen into some of the tank cars and allowing the fuel to burn itself out.

"They're going to accelerate the burn. As soon as it's burned out, then they can start pulling things out and determine if the bridge is damaged," Ms. Hart said. "They've done some environmental studies already with the water, and they seem to think there's no enviromental hazard."

Ethanol is also known as grain alcohol, the type that is in liquor.

National Transportation Safety Board officials on the scene said they had no idea what caused the derailment.

First published on October 21, 2006 at 12:00 am