BURNING FOR YEARS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23157, 1 October 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

BURNING FOR YEARS

Terrible Fire Men Cannot' Put Out

ONE of the most terrible fires of all time is burning in the coalfields of Ohio, in the United States \ t it has been burning for 54 years. It was started in 188/1 during a great strike of miners, arid - all endeavours have failed to extinguish it. Mining companies have spent enormous sums in trying to put it out. Thousands of acres of once beautiful land have been undermined by this vast conflagration. Cracks open to give off steam and gas. Great trees succumb ns 'their roots burn. Mighty" explosions occur, shooting flames hundreds of feet jhto tiic "ii. The ground is seared and cracked by <the intense heat. ! It .is hoped that a solution has been found. Despairing of extinguishing the

fire, authority is walling it in, so that it may burn itself out. Coal lies in seams, and the is to wall in every seam that is; : not broken by what the geologists call a fault (a break in the continuity iof strata). Barriers of earth are being formed at every point where there is continuity of Some of the barriers have to bo carried, along for a mile. In choosing a placo for. a barrier the engineers have, of course, to allow for the advancing- fire which creeps along the seams.'lt:is slow work, and the ' wnllingin of all the burning seams will not be accomplished in less than two years. We have to imagine miners cutting uut tho coal in a wide seam and substituting earth, while pumping out the water that accumulates in all mining operations. The masses of coal within the barrier will never be saved; they destroy themselves—a loss of millions of pounds.