About 200 people were evacuated from their homes yesterday in the Creighton section of East Deer so private contractors for Norfolk Southern Railroad could remove from the Allegheny River a ruptured tanker car filled with a hazardous chemical.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette An offical stands on one of the derailed tanker cars of a Nortfolk Southern freight train in the Allegheny River in East Deer Township yesterday. Click photo for larger image. More on the derailment Map: Site of train derailment Graphic: Derailed train leaks toxic chemical Rail safety improving, but threat of dangerous spills remains

Four tankers and nine other rail cars derailed at 5:28 a.m. yesterday about 13 miles north of the Point. Two of the tanker cars that ended up in the river were filled with anhydrous hydrogen fluoride, a caustic concentrated gas that turns into hydrofluoric acid when mixed with water. One tanker is almost completely submerged.

The river worked as a positive factor for the contents of the derailed tanker because the water diluted the hydrofluoric acid as it flowed downriver and helped prevent the gas from being released into the air, said Bob Full, the county's emergency management director.

But removal of the damaged tanker, to be done sometime today, will be a delicate operation because of the danger posed by the potential release of the caustic hydrogen fluoride gas into the air once the tanker is removed from the water, he said.

Hydrogen fluoride can cause burns to the skin and eyes and may be fatal if inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

David Dzombak, a professor in Carnegie Mellon University's department of civil and environmental engineering, said caution should be the watchword in the tanker removal.

"The hydrogen in gas stage is very toxic," Dzombak said. "I would be concerned about keeping the workers and people in the area safe from the hydrogen fluoride gas."

The chemical is very powerful and "will eat glass," said Don Bialosky, deputy director of emergency operations for the state Department of Environmental Protection in Pittsburgh. It is used most commonly in the steel industry as a corrosive to clean steel, particularly stainless steel. Hydrogen fluoride is also used in an extremely diluted state in water purification.

Water treatment plants downriver from the derailed tanker, including those of Pittsburgh and Shaler, are monitoring the quality of water from their intake lines for acidity, Bialosky said. The DEP and Norfolk Southern will also monitor the water at the site of the tanker spill to try and determine the degree of acidity in the water.

Though the river worked partially to neutralize the chemical, Dzombak and Bialosky each said the leaking hydrogen fluoride gas, which turns into hydrofluoric acid when it hits the water, will cause damage to the aquatic life around the tanker.

The cause of the derailment is under investigation. As a routine matter in transportation accidents, toxicology tests will be done on blood drawn from the engineer, conductor and a conductor trainee after the accident, Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband said.

The derailment occurred roughly in the middle of the 83-car train.

By last night, Norfolk Southern had successfully removed the front and rear cars that remained on the tracks by using other engines to move them northeast to Altoona and southwest to Pittsburgh so contractors could gain access to the derailed cars, Husband said.

The train, which stretched 5,512 feet, was on its way from the Conway railroad yards in Beaver County to Allentown in Eastern Pennsylvania. Seventeen of the 83 cars were empty.

There were no reported injuries, but Allegheny County emergency management officials, between 6 and 8 a.m. yesterday, evacuated a half-mile area in the southwestern corner of East Deer. The evacuation stretches from the C.L. Schmitt Bridge, also known as the New Kensington Bridge, to Edna Street in Creighton.

The county closed Freeport Road between the bridge on the border of East Deer and Springdale townships and Crawford Run Road. Emergency officials also were stationed at the top of Murray Hill Road in Frazer, near Route 28, to block access to that road, which runs to Freeport Road in Creighton.

The Port Authority of Allegheny County rerouted the 1A New Kensington buses around the detour.

The American Red Cross established an emergency shelter at the Holy Family Church social hall, located about a block outside the evacuation zone of First, Second, Third, Edna and Marion streets and the first six blocks of Freeport Road in Creighton. About a dozen residents spent most of the day at the shelter, but most of those who were evacuated found alternative sites to spend the day and last night.

Leonard Sadowski was at his Marion Street home when firefighters came to his door about 6:30 a.m. and told him to leave. Sadowski, his wife Mary and teenage daughter Christine went to the Red Cross shelter. Sadowski anticipated he would be in for a long ordeal, so he took along a deck of cards.

"I figured if we're going to be evacuated, instead of sitting here and twiddling my thumbs, my thinking was I'd find something to do," Sadowski said as he sat at a table in the shelter playing solitaire.

Emergency officials will maintain the evacuation order until the tanker is removed and they determine it is safe for the residents to return, said Full.

"The safety of the residents is our main concern," Full said.

The county and the railroad also notified federal officials, including the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board, as a matter of protocol. The FBI is required to be notified in the event of any railroad accident for homeland security reasons, Full said.

The U.S. Coast Guard closed off the two-mile stretch of the river between the Schmitt and Tarentum bridges to traffic yesterday.

In addition, representatives from the Texas company that manufactured the chemical and other experts in hazardous materials from across the country were coming to assist in the cleanup, Full said.

Though emergency officials said the tanker derailment did not pose a hazard as yet to the New Kensington side of the river, health officials canceled outpatient appointments yesterday and today for Citizens General Hospital and rescheduled the appointments for the Alle-Kiski Medical Center in the Natrona Heights section of Harrison, hospital spokeswoman Kelli Serencsa said. Patients who had appointments can call 724-334-2562 to reschedule.

Norfolk Southern plans to bring in empty tanker cars and transfer the gas into them from the four 150,000-gallon derailed cars so it can be transported, Husband said. The railroad will not know how much of the chemical remains in the submerged tanker, however, until they get closer to the scene, he said.

Between 15 and 20 Norfolk Southern trains a day travel on the railroad line up the north side of the Allegheny River, Husband said. The route is a secondary line to move freight; the main route runs east from Pittsburgh to Greensburg toward Johnstown. The last train to travel the auxiliary line before the derailment closed it was eastbound about 4 a.m.