After the Cheswold incident, Millar said, Wilmington should consider a push to restrict or find alternate routes for hazardous cargoes now moving through densely populated areas. Officials from the District of Columbia are encouraging hazardous cargo rerouting measures in Boston, Philadelphia and other cities.

"If you don't reroute these cargoes, we're prepositioning them for the convenience of terrorists, right where the terrorists would like to have them," Millar said.

Chlorine and ammonia account for 80 percent of the most-dangerous toxic-vapor chemicals hauled by railroads, according to industry officials. Both can sear lungs and blind people at concentrations that could be found miles from a rail car spill, according to researchers.

According to one widely quoted study completed for the Chlorine Institute, a chlorine tank car release in Delaware could send a killer plume of gas nearly 15 miles long and 4 miles wide if released in a quick surge. Depending on wind and weather conditions, a cloud of that size could affect more than 180,000 people if released in Wilmington or Newark, according to a check of census records by The News Journal.

A rail tanker of anhydrous ammonia, commonly used as a refrigerant by Delaware poultry and food processing industries, could release a cloud capable of sickening people 3.5 miles away, according to industry risk-management reports filed with the Environmental Protection Agency.

More than 13,000 people live within a 3.5-mile radius of tracks passing through Middletown, according to the 2000 census. The same is true of Milford. Current numbers are likely higher in both fast-growing communities.

"Most of the trains I see are box cars. I don't see very many tank cars," she said. "I suppose that's a good thing. Our property backs right up to the right-of-way."

"You get used to it," Ryan said. "I've never paid any attention. I grew up about 10 feet off a railroad track in rural Chester County. Granted, the majority of time there it was lumber or potato chips going through. If it is dangerous, I could see why people would be concerned."

Jon Townley, chief of Newark's Aetna Hose, Hook & Ladder Fire Company, said he was unaware of any recent talks aimed at reducing risks from high-hazard cargoes.

Rail and industry groups brand the "worst-case" spill-hazard scenarios as highly conservative and unlikely. They also have opposed efforts to reroute their shipments.

The American Association of Railroads estimates that the 100,000 carloads of "toxic-if-inhaled" chemicals its members carry each year amount to about two-tenths of 1 percent of all freight but more than half of railroad liability insurance expense.

"We have opposed rerouting. The fact is, if you compel re-routing around cities or if cities are given the right to compel re-routing, you could make it impossible to ship some of these things," said association spokesman Tom White.

John Rago, communications director for Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker, said he was unaware of any discussions with Washington officials about rerouting cargo.

"Anything we can do to reduce the risk to our neighborhoods is a good thing," Brown said. "They should not be bringing some of these chemicals into our city at all."

One study prepared for Delaware's State Emergency Response Commission found that about 11 percent of all rail cargoes involve hazardous materials, with about 34 percent of hazardous rail shipments passing through the state, rather than starting or stopping locally.

Chemical hazards have diminished along Delaware rail lines in recent years. Business decisions shuttered factories in Claymont and Delaware City that ranked as high-volume producers of toxic chlorine, benzene and sulfur compounds.

But risks from accidental or intentional releases remain in all three counties and nationwide, and are believed to have increased since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to state and national officials.

"In today's climate, the potential for a catastrophic event is more real," Carolyn W. Merritt, chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, said during Senate testimony last year. "Today an intentional criminal act is a real possibility."

In June, a National Academy of Sciences council recommended increased efforts to make chemical industries and transportation of chemicals safer and more secure while also improving readiness for catastrophes.

"We're trying to promote through this report the fact that we need to develop proactive initiatives. We need to be proactive in the way we prepare for these types of events," said University of Delaware Deputy Provost Havidan Rodriguez. Then director of the university's internationally recognized Disaster Research Center, Rodriguez was one of the 13 council developers of the report. "Communications is always a primary issue. The general tendency is 'let's not provide detailed information, because people will panic,' which is the wrong step to take when people are responding to these type of events."

During the Cheswold accident, however, some company and emergency officials repeatedly balked when asked to detail worst-case possibilities, including the potential for fire or explosions.

"In general, communities are not well prepared for these kinds of accidents," said Joanne Nigg, acting director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware.

"Disaster research has shown that people generally will not panic, and in these types of incidents the best way to assure that people respond well is to provide adequate, accurate and continuously updated information. If you hide the information, that might lead to inappropriate behavior," she said.

Dover resident Ann Rider said that residents had to wait too long, for too little information, after the Dow Reichhold accident. Those complaints, she said, surfaced repeatedly in the "buzz" that followed the weekend emergency.

"This whole incident has scared everyone, to a point where maybe it needs to be looked at by someone in the city," Rider said. "The buzz from everyone I talked with afterward was that it was portrayed as handled well. But, in reality, a lot of people were left in the dark. If it's going to take three hours to warn people, then something else needs to be done."

This is cache, read story here