The human race has become very proficient at putting out fires, but we have always been far better at starting them. In the United States, for example, 1.6 million fires were started in 2006, resulting in more than three thousand deaths and roughly sixteen thousand injuries. Occasionally, we have the terrible misfortune of starting these fires along coal seams, where the coal catches fire, often exceeding temperatures of 1000°F. These fires burn for thousands of years, are terrible for the environment, and are expensive and dangerous (read: almost impossible) to put out.
While they happen everywhere, most of the world's worst coal seam fires are in countries like China, India, and Indonesia. These countries have a voracious and growing appetite for energy and development, and harvesting their large reserves of coal is a convenient and cheap way to fuel themselves. Unfortunately, they also lack stringent government regulations, and small, private coal-mining operations usually take no precautions against coal fires.
China's coal fires are especially problematic: An estimate in June 2004 by geologist Glenn Stracher determines that Chinese coal fires consume up to 200 million tons of coal per year, ruining the land, air, and water, disrupting animals and affecting human health. And this is just from coal that's being accidentally burned.
With the Beijing Olympics opening today, China's coal fire problem is just one of the many environmental issues the country is wrestling to deal with (or cover up). A recent TIME article discusses China's manipulation of air pollution statistics:
In China's western Xinjiang province, [reporter Steven Q. Andrews] visited a site where authorities had claimed a long-burning [coal] fire had been put out. "I decided go to see how it was extinguished, and flames were visible and the entire thing was still burning," he says. "They said it was put out, and who is to say otherwise?"
Of course, the United States has its share of mine fires also. I was (dubiously) fortunate enough to explore one of them, in Centralia, PA last year. My group was only passing through to visit a coal mine further west, but we stopped to take in the experience.
Located directly above a long seam of anthracite coal, Centralia and its neighboring communities (with names like Ashland, Byrnsville, etc...) were mining towns since the mid-1800's. In the early 1960's, when coal mining became less profitable, most of the area's mining operations went out of business and the entire region sank into an economic depression. Somewhat foolishly, in 1961 the town started to use a close-by abandoned strip mine as a landfill, dumping all sorts of trash into it. Then, as was the town's yearly custom, in May 1962 a group of firefighters set the dump on fire. This time, however, the coal seam caught fire, and has never been extinguished. (Interested in a more detailed story?)
As we drove into Centralia from Ashland (see a map), State Route 61 veered right. To our left, roadblocks barred what turned out to be the original Route 61, abandoned when the coal fire started to make the ground unstable. When coal burns underground, it leaves large, empty caverns. The heat and gas from the burning also weakens the structural integrity of the rock around these caverns, creating fissures that get filled with rainwater and erode the rock even more. Eventually, the ground is unable to hold any weight, and it will sink and buckle. In 1981, a 12-year-old Centralia boy fell into a 150-foot-deep sinkhole that opened underneath him. (Thankfully, he was saved by his older cousin, who "pulled him from the mouth of the hole before he could plunge to his probable death", according to Wikipedia.) In the Shuijingqu Mine in China, burned rock from coal fires has created collapse pits that are more than 275 feet deep.
The soil atop the burned rock is also charred and barren. There were a lot of trees above Centralia's coal seam; now many of them are dead and dying for lack of nutrition. Similar effects can be seen in China's Wuda Coalfield, where the cracked surface of the ground also accellerates erosion, creating deserts where forests used to be.
Walking through Centralia, one of the first things we noticed was a distinct sulfuric smell, like rotten eggs. We encountered piles of charred brush and refuse among plumes of smoke that had been steadily rising for 40 years. This was shocking to me; it completley blows my mind that most of the coal fires in China are worse.
In areas around the burning Chinese Wuda Coalfield and the Liuhuanggou coal fire, the smoke is so thickly pervasive that is impossible to see more than 20 feet in any directon around you. This smoke is thick with harmful gases (such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide) and coaldust. Winds pick this noxious smoke and send it to cities like Urumqi, in the Xinjiang Region, where the pollution is comparable to the pollution in Beijing.
Leaving Centralia was a bit of a relief. While the experience was exhilerating, I couldn't shake the feeling that the ground might cave beneath me any moment, or that I was putting myself at risk for lung cancer just by being there.
Thankfully, there are a few efforts underway to try to fight these underground coal fires. From Environment News Service:
One engineering firm, Goodson and Associates, Inc., has developed a heat resistant "grout": a mixture of sand, cement, fly ash, water and foam that can be pumped around burning material. The grout, called Thermocell, helps to cut off the fire's oxygen supply and allow the blaze to cool down.
While traditional coal fire fighting techniques require large equipment used close to the red hot fire, the readily flowing grout can be pumped from a distance away," said Goodson and Associates owner Gary Colaizzi.
… Colaizzi's firm has used its grout on fires in Colorado and Arizona, and discussions are underway about the possibility of using it in China.
Check out some of the photos I posted to flickr of my trip to Centralia:
Photo credits, listed from top to bottom: "Noxium Fumage," by Flickr user eqqman, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license. "Young coal worker in Linfen (Shanxi, China)," by Flickr user andi808, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license. "DSCN3150.JPG" by Flickr user Lyndi&Jason under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. "Centralia, PA: Abandoned road is pretty much ruined" by me on Flickr, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license. "Beijing smog" by Flickr user kevindooley under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.
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