A Study of Underground Coal Mine Fires

For one of my final blog posts on here, I would like to educate you about underground coal mine fires and their dangers as they are found across the United States.

A diagram showing how these fires work. Source: http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/CoalFires.html

What’s the problem?

These mines became abandoned over time due to collapse or various health hazards and there is no real way to clean up the mines once they’re left. The coal just sits there in highly compacted corridors until it ignites from spontaneous combustion. Since there are still massive amounts of coal left in the mine, the fire can pretty much burn indefinitely until the temperature builds up so much it eventually cracks the surface so smoke can escape as pictured below.

Smoke rising from a large crack in Pennsylvania Highway 61. Source: https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years-ghost-town

Where are they?

Most abandoned coal mines in the U.S. are in the East, with roughly 60% of them being three main states: West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.

Top 5 biggest states for coal. East – KY, WV, & PA. West – WY & MT. Source: https://wvcoalassociation.wordpress.com/news-comment/coal-mining-101/

 Mitigation Efforts

Coal fire prevention is not unseen; ideally, the exposed surface is sprayed following the mining, and then grout injections into the cracks and vents to cut off continued growth, but the process of doing it scales with how big the fire is, and since most of these have seemingly endless supplies of coal, the cost to extinguish them is massive.

Source: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/specific-and-non-specific-hazards-in-underground-mines-2367338

Centralia, PA

Centralia, Pennsylvania is one of the biggest and longest-burning underground coal fires in the United States since 1962, burning at depths of up to 300 feet across an 8-mile radius. Records show that at its current rate, Centralia could burn for another 250 years. As of 2017, the current population is all the way down to 5 from 1,500 back in 1962.

• Fun Fact: The town council had originally planned to clean up the strip mine dump but made no official documentation in the minutes, most likely because their plan detailed just setting it on fire, which is against state law.

The town that set itself on fire. Source: https://rare.us/rare-life/centralia-mine-fire-pa-burning/

• Fun Fact #2: The horror franchise “Silent Hill” is loosely based on Centralia, PA. Claiming instead of an underground burning coal mine under the city, but instead an entrance to Hell.

Sources: Centralia Mine Fire, Abandoned Mines, Mitigation, Gallery Photo 1, Gallery Photo 2, Gallery Photo 3, Gallery Photo 4.

Ghost Stories of Geography: Bermuda Edition

This week on Oceans Seven I am taking you further southeast than any place we’ve gone in my past blogs. I wanted to try something new, so I thought I would delve into one of the pop culture ghost stories used in North America: the Bermuda Triangle!

The Triangle’s lethality is blamed on all sorts of phenomena ranging from Otherworldly StormsAliens to the birthplace of Atlantis.

To give you some introduction knowledge on the area, the Bermuda Triangle is a section of the Atlantic Ocean over 500,000 square miles long and is tipped at 3 points by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico; forming a triangle as pictured in the photo above. Since the early 1900s, dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared in the waters, but half of them remain unexplained as to how they disappeared. Despite these suspicious scenarios, their frequency here is no different than planes/ships disappearing in any other section of the ocean.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/878063/aliens-ufo-bermuda-triangle-flight-19-christopher-Columbus

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-bermuda-triangle-myths-mysteries-disappearances-vanishes

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-bermuda-triangle-myths-mysteries-disappearances-vanishes

One of the most famous incidents (coined Flight 19) took place in 1945 and involved five U.S. Navy bombers carrying fourteen men from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their original plan was to practice some bombing runs on a nearby area but apparently, the flight leaders’ compass began to malfunction and he was lost from the rest of the squadron, resulting in the rest of the planes flying aimlessly with no navigation until they ran out of fuel and were lost at sea. A few hours later a rescue plane with a thirteen-man crew disappeared as well. After weeks of searching with no evidence, the Navy concluded the investigation with no answers.

Flight 19 crew.

How Does it Work?

One of the most common explanations for the Bermuda Triangle is magnetism! Our planet’s magnetic North isn’t the same as its geographic North; meaning that compasses don’t exactly point true North unless they are being read along an agonic line. Coincidentally enough, one of these lines runs from Lake Superior down to the Gulf of Mexico (near Fort Lauderdale, FL which is one of the points of the triangle as mentioned above). With this knowledge, one can assume that back then, sailors would account for discrepancies in their compass readings because they would think they’re close enough to the agonic line that throws them off. I have attached a video below that delves into magnetic declination and agonic lines.

For More Information:

Sources: The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19, Featured Image, Bermuda Triangle, Bermuda Triangle History, What Science Can Tell Us.