Hey Ryan! About 10 minutes into the video; when discussing the Centralia, PA mine fire, you show an article about a gas pipeline explosion that happened in Centralia, MISSOURI in 1982. Just wanted to point that out so no one gets confused. Great video as usual though.

"If you ever used coal for a grill..." whatever you cooked probably came out disgusting. The stuff you cook with is "charcoal", traditionally made by heating wood in an oxygen-depleted environment, although in the more common "briquette" form, is made from sawdust that undergoes the same process and is then chemically bound into a convenient shape. When coal is heated in an oxygen-depleted environment, the resulting material is referred to as "coke" and may be used as a higher quality fuel or industrial carbon source than the original coal.

Pennsylvania native here: I'm actually working on a documentary of the infamous Centralia coal fire disaster, reenacted with stop-motion LEGO animation!

Just FYI, you don't need a flame or spark to ignite coal. Coal is prone to spontaneous combustion as it oxides. So just need oxygen

I worked in a coal mine that had a fire in it. They shut down the section and sealed it off and continued mining. It has been burning since I think the 40s. You can see steam escaping the rocks on the side hill above the portal It's crazy.

Good on you for talking of the Laurel Run Mine Fire, no one ever mentions it. It'll burn for decades yet.

That one time they empty a lake into a mine and it's only a non-flammable salt mine.

Hello from Australia I have climbed burning mountain and its thought a lightning strike thousands of years ago started it ,the early explorers though it was an active volcano until they made their way to the site .You can actually look down through cracks on the surface and see the coal burning .

The movie called Silent Hill was loosely based on the underground coalmine fire in Centralia Pennsylvania.

I live close to Centralia PA and I have also left a mark on the graffiti highway. The town of Centralia is almost a ghost town but there are a few houses that are still lived in to this day because the owners simply refuse to move

Turn the entire area into a geothermal power generator. Trap the CO2 for industrial use or sequestration

Just in case anyone reads this Centralia PA is not an interesting place to go anymore. It's mostly quad trails and the graffiti highway has been covered in dirt mounds by the property owner

I'm from like 45 minutes north of there lol I live by concrete city and old rail company town. My great grandpa died in the Avondale hill mine fire. My buddy lives on Avondale hill and I'm like a 5 minute drive from there. Alot of my family toiled in the dark and I'm proud to be from their line.

The Centralia fire is referenced in the dark ride Black Diamond at Knoebels Amusement Resort in Elysburg, PA.

Grew up on Giant's Despair in Laurel Run. Massive mine fire there. Burning longer than Centralia too.

The mountains in the north east Pennsylvania are still on fire and very close to cities and no one is the wiser.

There is one burning in Ohio from miners on strike pushed a burning mine car into the mine setting it ablaze this is in the hocking hills area .

guess i don't cook in the right circles - never knew anyone who used coal in their grills.

I can't believe that someone hasn't created a generator to utilize the heat from this fire to generate electricity.

You mentioned coal was less used by the great depression with cheaper fuel alternatives such as electricity? In most cases the electricity was generated by burning coal. Electricity is only "clean" if it comes from a clean source - electricity generated by coal is not clean.

My Great-Great Grandfather on my mom's side worked in the coal mines around Hazelton. One time while working in the mine a spark ignited a pocket of gas which sent a fireball down the tunnel. Most of miners made it out safely, but my Great-Great Grandfather went back to retrieve his brother who had fallen. In the process my Great-Great Grandfather got his nose burned off in the fire.

I drove and walked Centralia in the mid 90s. You could still see where the houses were. The streets name posts were there. No houses. A church still stood and a cemetery with a banner strung across the iron fence “ Our Future “. U could see where it had burned under the roadway and smoke coming up from the ground

I can remember Carbondale/ Scranton Pa. area smoldering as a kid! This was in the early to mid 70’s.

My Father and Grandfather both worked in the Coal Mines near Centraila. My Grandfather lived in what was called The Patch, also called Burynsville was right by Centraila on Rt.61 North .

Oh, that fire could be put out, but it would not be cheap to do. As you stated fire needs three things to burn. Take one away, and it wont burn. So the easiest thing to take away is air. So pump in enough liquid nitrogen, you would not only starve the fire of air, but also would cool things down. Just a thought.

Back in the thirties they successfully extinguished a mine fire in Ohio by digging down and building a firewall. This fire had continually been burning since the 1880's. Perhaps this approach was not practicable in Centralia's circumstances, but I wonder.

I live in Schuylkill County Pa. Many in my family died in mine accidents

I worked for a retail heating coal and oil dealer. There was a rail siding with a grate and a hopper car would dump the coal into the grate and a conveyor belt would take the coal up to the top of the 80-foot silo. Eventually we stopped selling coal and the coal silos were torn down.

Anthracite, otherwise known as steam coal for its superior burning properties.

Watched to learn more to understand the coal seam fire that raged this last December through Superior & Marshall Colorado. Verified 100 mph winds whipped up the coals. Titanic supposedly had a coal bin fire as well.

You should have mentioned bituminous coal, which is also used for powering steel mills and power plants. It's mined in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. There have also been it's share of coal mine disasters and underground mine fires. Besides the deep mining, there is also strip mining ,where the coal is mined near the surface of the earth. There are many abandoned mines in the area. Another problem with abandoned mines is mine subsidence. When a mine is abandoned, the coal company is supposed to leave pillars of coal that supports the land above. Sometimes these pillars are not left or they collapse and the surface ground falls in ,causing damage to building foundations as well as utility lines and infrastructure. I went to q middle school that was built on the site of a mine and the floors later sank and cracked. It's cost a lot of money to repair them. It also happens to houses. Many try to sue the former owners of the mines but the companies cease to exist and it's beyond the legal statute of limitations so there is no way to prove lliability. There are websites that show maps to determine is a former mine is on a piece of property. There is also the problem as tp whether the coal and mining rights belong to the property owner or to a utility or mining company that could literally mine under a person's property. This is another mining problem you should do a video on. I do enjoy your informative videos.

In Australia there is an underground coal mine located under castle hill and has been burning since the late 1930’s there also a sealed mine in the centre of Ipswich that was leaking toxic gas

I remember one about when they dug into Susquehanna and had to fill it with cool cars

The Wyoming Valley has to many mine disasters to name lol Avondale mine fire, the knox mine disaster when they dug to close to the susquehanna River and flooded miles of mine. Countless cave ins, young boys dieing in the breaker houses from losing limbs.

Centralia was just on the local news the other day "Burning Coal Country: Some wondering if underground fire spreading toward homes, businesses in Schuylkill"

uh... questions the video said that electricity was cheaper alternatives of coal. but didn't electricity generator also used coal? at least in my country they did. so how does electricity replace coal when coal needed for making electricity? pls enlighten me

Me and my wife visited her relatives in Pensilvania back in the late seventies where it seemed like all the men worked in the mines and all the women were nurses. At night you could see the fires in the distance.

RE at 3:45 Electricity is not a Fuel Alternative. It is merely a transmission method.The energy comes from something used to MAKE the electricity.

In Pennsylvania, everything between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia is "Arkansas."* *With worse roads.

Centralia fire still burns, but they say the fire has moved on and is no longer under the town.

Here's another view. I had always read that anthracite was not a good coking coal for steel making. Metallurgical grade bituminous is far superior. However, anthracite was excellent for home heating since it burned slower and gave off less smoke. The rise of oil and gas in home heating was what killed the anthracite mines, not so much industrial use. Incidentally, anthracite coal was and probably still is used in making everything from chemicals to dyes to detergents.

3:47 electricity isn't an energy source.

if it cant be put out i wonder if it could be used for ground source heat?

You never did explain how underground fires get their oxygen. It would seem that blocking all vents and holes would put out the fire eventually.

Shout out from Nanticoke PA . 1ST generation that didn't have to go down in that god forsaken hell.

I was always curious of visiting Centralia one day.

Coal is a gift from mother nature.

I live about 20 miles from the burning mountain in Australia..

It's a pretty hot property market in that area.

a mildly interesting thing is there is no more coal being formed after bacteria began breaking down lignin, after that you only get much smaller bits of coal forming from peat bogs

In public view you are right fire needs air ,fuel and heat but in firefighting world there's and 4th called chemical reaction.

In coal mines coal dust is a major source of fire the dust will start burning at room temperature, this is why they mix it with pulverized limestone.

at 9:58: this fire is in Missouri as per your newspaper clipping

1:54 thats outside my school lol

So, no plans for geothermal plants in Centralia any time soon?

hook up water pipes into the holes some how have them from a lake then that could help

I live in copper country. In my town, a fire started, underground in the 1950s I think. Anyway, it's still going. Apparently it is nowhere as significant as the Centralia fire, however.

I'm starting to get the idea that we ain't as think as we smart we is . : D

Coal heat is a dirty business. We lived in a double house heated with a coal burning furnace in the basement. As kids, we used to use the coal chute for a slide, much to our Mom’s displeasure. The house was always dusty in winter so the walls needed washing down or repapering every spring, and had that vague scent of coal gas. It was the children’s job to sift the ashes over the rusty 50 gallon drums in the back yard and to bring in the milk pail of unburned clinkers. One of the boys was always the switch from Babsha for teasing her little pug dog, Fritzie. They’d make as if to play with his favorite old shoe, but toss it right in the middle of the heating grate in the front room. Fritzie was afraid to walk on the grate, so he’d run around the outside of it and bark and bark. The boys thought it was funny, but Babsha said it was plain mean-spirited. She’d order the offending party or parties to return the shoe and then she’d take to the switch on the backs of their legs. 😊

Camelbacks………..such a great overlooked engine!! Toots.

Electricty is a fuel?

these coal-mine fires can be the preferred places (I think) where compressed, partially frozen CO2 ( with dry-ice powder ) from power plants should be deposited, underground! removing CO2 from the atmosphere and quenching a fire = double the value, half the cost! CO2 from beneath the fire should slowly be seeping up, replacing the oxygen, and that's it.

I would have thought flooding the mine would have been the simplest method to extingushing the mine fire? We in the UK abandoned coal mining mainly due to the EU and others exporting our prime industries and manufacturing. These could be viable today, if Thatche in 1580 closed a govenment research establishment that had perfected carbon capture, fluidised bed coal burning and making a process that took waste/recycling and automatically sorted it. Thanks for the intresting videos.

The guys that started this fire have a great legacy. Few people create something that lasts nearly forever.

Nothing but Trouble!

Try again. It is a fire tetrahedron...oxygen, fuel, heat, chemical chain reaction (or source of ignition).

"cent-trolly- uh" not "cent-trail-ee-uh" lol

Mine subsidence is another leftover yet ongoing problem.

My deepest sympathies Mount Carmel Pennsylvania

One solution come to mind. Run a pipeline to the Ocean and pump that salt water into key area's there by flooding out the fire. I figure it may take 10 to 30 years of constant pumping to make sure that it never again is reignited. It may be expensive now but the cost later will be catastrophic for when (Plausibly) the fire eventually spreads through veins in the earth's crust to other cities.

I knew that Centralia was just one of a bunch of coal seam fires, but goddamn, I had no clue it was that much.

The Knox Mine disaster is what killed coal mining in Pa.

So question in trying to extinguish these mines why was co2 or carbon monoxide pumped into the mines suffocating the fires. Maybe it would require too much of the stuff or maybe it would be too dangerous but it seems like it should work if the air being pumped in is allowing the fire to continue why not pump air in that will drown the fires

Just a note too: The coal used in modern times to be made into coke for use in the iron and steel industry is bituminous, not anthracite. Bituminous is harder coal. In Pennsylvania, this coal more commonly found in veins in the western part of the state, versus the northeastern Anthracite.

Why don't we lock off the ventilation and pump in an inert gas?

If it gonna burn for 100 years....make a geo thermal elec plant out of it. Make it useful.

That coal keeps lots of people pretty warm too, and I agree it's dirty, destroys lungs from mining burning all the way around, if only it was cleaner, grew up all around it.

I love your videos, though I watch them with headphones and every time the intro you have with music in the beginning triggers my anxiety. Maybe turn it down a little bit, or try a different tune?

I don't get it.....why can't you flood the mine with water?

Wasn't there supposed to be a coal fire on the Titanic that may have weakened the metal or somehow increased the damage that scraping the iceberg did ?

did anyone try flooding a mine with water?

what would happen if it were flooded under a lake

Why don't they pump it nitrogen into them and starve the fires out maybe even CO2?

As retired coalminer of india enjoyed a lot.

Why doesn't someone tap the heat from the coal mine fires and possibly create steam to drive a generator if they're going to just continue to burn when mine is well used or heat to generate power

All coal is formed of vegetation that was buried during The Flood 4,370 years ago. The pockets of methane are also from the buried vegetation.

Drove 2 hrs to centralia and wasn’t impressed

You forgot coal dust. It lights over a wider range of dispersion than methane.

...well you could try stopping a nuke down the shaft, but that might make it worse.

having seen its always sunny in Philadelphia i say strip mine the entire place truck in some sand and start over.

I visited Centralia, PA two years ago. There was no evidence of smoke coming out of any cracks in the ground, and one of the locals told me the fire is pretty much extinguished.

I wonder why they can't just send a bunch of CO2 or halon 1211 into the mines to occlude the oxygen

👌👌👌👍👍

Pump seawater or similar into it

I can't follow what the hell you're talking about. You're talking about a mine fire in Carbondale. Mentioning that in 1952 the first deaths happened, while simultaneously displaying news articles about Centralia, and that didnt start until 1962. And then up pops an article about a gas main fire in Centralia, Missouri. Did you just find some random images of articles and quick tell some video editor to just move a bunch of articles around the screen, without even reading what they were about?

Pump in Co2?

Maybe vastly open cast mine thr immidiate area of thr fire Everyone here finks thrt. Yer or pump water in how exactly is thrt impossible dnt fink Pennsylvania is a huge distance from the sea

It is crazy that these mines are still allowed to burn emitting so much Co2

Steve

Ya, not a huge fan saying its impossible to do anything. Fire like everything has a set amount of rules.For example if a fire isn't able to access oxygen. It will go out.