coal fires

The growing interest in coal fires has led to the largest collection of peer-reviewed publications about this topic ever undertaken for publication, which includes the work of scientists and engineers around the world interested in peat, the precursor of coal, and peat fires. This project has resulted in a four-volume book, entitled “Coal and Peat Fires: A Global Perspective,” to be published later this year by Elsevier. It will include an interactive online world map of coal and peat fires.

Currently (and historically), most people who deal with underground coal fires and gob fires are employed by government agencies, mining and engineering companies, and firefighting agencies. Today, as in the past, these institutions undertake various responsibilities that include recording the location of coal fires, tracking their progression, and extinguishing the most problematic ones, if physically and economically feasible.

In eastern India, north of the Damodar River, approximately 70 fires are burning in the Jharia coalfield, the largest coalmine fire complex in the world. The majority of fires in Jharia ignite when coal, exposed to air during mining operations, spontaneously combusts. Particulate matter and noxious gases emitted from the burning coal — including sulfur, carbon and nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons released at the surface from gas vents, ground fissures and the soil — have caused illnesses that range from stroke to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

By some accounts, Hell on Earth is located directly below Centralia, Pa.: Smoke rises from the cracked ground, smoldering sinkholes open without warning, and what is left of the town’s abandoned houses and surrounding woodlands is scorched and covered in a layer of smelly sulfur. Once a productive mining town in eastern Pennsylvania’s valuable anthracite coal region, Centralia has been reduced to a smoky ghost town, lacking even a zip code, by an underground coal fire that has been burning for nearly 50 years.