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.