Coal Fires :: Fire Coal Mining Essays

Coal FiresIve long been familiar with the sentiment of coal mines, but a common occurrence I was unfamiliar with previous to this class was the concept of coal mine fires, but it is a huge business, both economically and environmentally.Perhaps the most infamous American example of a coal mine fire is Centralia, a townsfolk in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania. Centralia was like any opposite coal town until one fateful day in 1962, when a heap of fly off the handleing trash in a dump that duplicate as a mine stripping pit quickly banquet to other parts of the mine. After a few months of bureaucratic haggling, the local brass finally agreed to drill to suffocate the fire, but it had disperse faster than had been anticipated and could not easily be contained. In the following(a) few old age, subsequent efforts to quell the fire proved futile plot of ground it expanded beyond the confines of the coal mine to other areas underneath peoples residences in the tow n of Centralia.Because the ground, at places, was literally ventilating system carbon monoxide into peoples homes, within a few years Centralia became a place unliveable for its residents and, in 1981, the government bought the town out, stipendiary to ship Centralias population elsewhere, away from the barren, sinking land and its still- stormy fires that had been incited about 20 years previous. A few remained behind despite the government-paid relocation and they still remain today, but the fire below them still dust also, raging unabated beneath what was once a booming town. (Tietz)The problem of Coal fires is not limited to Centralia, Pennsylvania, however. It is a problem that has caused major difficulties both in other areas of the United States (like Colorado) and also other parts of the world. In Indonesia, for instance, a serial publication of forest fires in 1982 ignited a series of coal fires, 106 of which the government was able to extinguish, leaving 159 that are still raging to this very day. (Amos) A coal fire in Jharia, India, that had already caused the government to relocate the towns population, destroyed a riverbank, unleashing a festinate of water in the underground mines that drowned 78 coal workers. By roughly estimates, fires that rage in the northern coal belt of China burn something like 200 million tons of coal each year. (Krajick) piece the economic cost of this is considerable over $1 billion spend in the United States alone, despite the fact that the relatively few coal fires it plays host to are still extant the environmental cost is mayhap even more alarming.