GALENA, Ill. - A BNSF Railway freight train loaded with crude oil derailed Thursday near the northern Illinois city of Galena and erupted into flames, authorities said.
The train derailed around 1:20 p.m. in a rural area where the Galena River meets the Mississippi, said Jo Daviess County Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Moser. The blaze didn't prompt any evacuations.
"There's no structures and no houses in that area," Moser said.
Galena City Administrator Mark Moran told the Dubuque Telegraph Herald newspaper in Iowa that eight tankers had left the track. "Two of those were still upright. The other six were not," she said.
The train had 103 cars loaded with crude oil, along with two buffer cars loaded with sand.
The derailment occurred 3 miles south of Galena in a heavily wooded and hilly area that is a major tourist attraction and the home of former President Ulysses S. Grant.
Firefighters could only access the derailment site by a bike path, said Galena Assistant Fire Chief Bob Conley. They attempted to fight a small fire at the scene but were unable to stop the flames.
Firefighters had to pull back for safety reasons and were allowing the fire to burn itself out, Conley said. In addition to Galena firefighters, emergency and hazardous material responders from Iowa and Wisconsin were at the scene.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner also put state personnel and equipment at the ready for deployment.
"I activated the State Incident Response Center to ensure we're ready to act quickly if any local responders need our assistance," Rauner said, adding he has sent staff from the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to the scene.
The cause of the derailment hasn't been determined, said BNSF spokesman Michael Trevino, adding railroad employees were on the scene and additional personnel were headed there.
In a statement, the Federal Railroad Administration said it had investigators headed to the derailment site and that the agency will conduct a "thorough investigation," to determine the cause.
The train's destination wasn't immediately known.
The derailment comes amid increased public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train. Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fires. A train carrying Bakken-formation crude from North Dakota crashed in a Quebec town in 2013, killing 47 people.