Explosions shake Illinois village after fiery derailment of freight train loaded with ethanol | StarTribune.com

"It was just amazing. I've never seen a fire like that before," Henry said. "When it would ignite or the pressure would relieve from one of the cars it would shoot, probably 100 or 200 feet in the air, these huge flames."
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As much as three-fourths of the 13.7 billion gallons of ethanol expected to be produced in the United States will be shipped by rail, Hartwig said. That's largely out of necessity because pipelines aren't close enough to ethanol producers to make that a practical transportation mode, Hartwig said.