Coal Fires :: Fire Coal Mining Essays

Coal FiresIve long been beaten(prenominal) with the concept of coal mines, nevertheless a common occurrence I was unfamiliar with previous to this class was the concept of coal mine fires, however it is a huge problem, both economically and environmentally.Perhaps the most notorious American example of a coal mine fire is Centralia, a township in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania. Centralia was like whatever different coal town until one fateful day in 1962, when a heap of burning trash in a hoot that doubled as a mine stripping pit quickly spread to other move of the mine. After a a fewer(prenominal) months of bureaucratic haggling, the local government finally agreed to drill to suffocate the fire, but it had spread faster than had been anticipated and could not easily be contained. In the next few years, subsequent efforts to quell the fire proved swollen-headed while it expanded beyond the confines of the coal mine to other areas underneath peoples reside nces in the town of Centralia.Because the ground, at places, was literally breathing 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, paying to ship Centralias population elsewhere, away from the barren, sinking estate and its take over-raging fires that had been incited almost 20 years previous. A few remained behind in spite of the government-paid relocation and they keep mum remain today, but the fire below them still remains also, raging unabated beneath what was once a halcyon town. (Tietz)The problem of Coal fires is not limited to Centralia, Pennsylvania, however. It is a problem that has caused major(ip) difficulties both in other areas of the United States (like Colorado) and also other parts of the world. In Indonesia, for instance, a series 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 rush of water in the underground mines that drowned 78 coal workers. By some estimates, fires that rage in the northern coal belt of mainland China burn something like 200 million tons of coal separately year. (Krajick)While the economic represent of this is considerable over $1 one thousand million spent 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 perhaps even more alarming.