I was talking with my dad just today (he will be 75 this Sunday). He was talking about his early childhood in Max Chaunk (now Jim Thorpe) Pa. Apparantly, the mining industry there kind of ended with a mining fire that raged for decades. And may still be hot today.
Doing a Google search with keywords: +jim+thorpe+coal+mine+fire gave me no answer.
I did get the websites for bed&breakfasts and other tourist info. Having been there when I was young I remember it being a pretty place, but very poor. So I am glad they are going after some tourist bucks.
I can picture a coal mine fire lasting for centuries if not acted upon. Lots of coal. Ventilation from holes in the ground. Methane gas.
The Questions:
Has the fire been put out? When?
Has this affected the structural integrity of the ground below the town?
How many other coal mines are not being mined because of similar circumstances? What is the longest burning coal mine in history? Or currently?
Thanks a lot Chique. I thought my dad said it started when he was young. He would have been in his 30’s in 1962. Maybe that’s young for him. But I thought it started in the 30’s.
Still, a fire that has been raging for almost 50 years. Makes me wonder.
Wasn’t there a road out in…um…UT/MT/WA/OR/CO/WY that was closed cos it was always almost but not quite about to burst into flames? Something about being built partly from shredded tires that started to smolder after a wildfire came through…
There’s a place here in New South Wales, Australia called Burning Mountain. It’s a coal seam that has been on fire for 5500 years (not a typo, 5500 years).
“As one section of the seam is burnt out the fire moves on to the next. However, as it is some 30 m underground there is little oxygen so the rate of combustion is slow. Consequently the burning site moves about one metre Southwards each year. As it has moved 6 km it is estimated that it has been burning for approximately the last 5500 years. It has shifted 150 m since 1828. As the seam was once exposed to the surface it is speculated that a bushfire may have ignited it, although sulphur is capable of spontaneous combustion after heating.”
Yep, the Pennsylvania coal fire is definitely beneath Centralia, not Jim Thorpe. Or rather, beneath what was Centralia. Every property in town has been condemned and almost everyone has left. Last I heard, there were a couple dozen residents who were staying on, illegally. Some, maybe all, of them believed that the fire isn’t nearly as bad as the government claims and there’s a conspiracy afoot to steal Centralia’s coal. Meanwhile there really isn’t a safe route in and out of the town, and more and more sinkholes are opening up.
In addition to the obvious short-term problem of convincing people to move to safety, and the depressing consequences of breaking up a small community and scattering everyone to the winds, there is a long-term problem. That section of Pennsylvania has huge coal deposits, many of them interconnected. Exactly how far is this fire going to spread, and how fast? As Motog’s post points out, coal seam fires can last for centuries.
Not a lot of people know this, but coal does spontaneously combust if it has the following properties:
High volatile matter content.
High moisture content.
Coal from the Powder River Basin (PRB) will very often spontaneously combust as the sun heats it and it starts to devolatize and evaporate its moisture. I have been to many coal plants that had continuous (albeit small) coal fires going in the pile. You can really only put them out by smothering them.
Also, I have seen train cars come into the plant on fire, and barges that smoked and smoldered like a furnace.
It is not due to sulfur in this case, since PRB coals are typified by having very low sulfur contents (0.3% to 0.8%).