CONSOL official says fire under control
EIGHTY-FOUR – The fire that began Monday morning at CONSOL Energy’s Mine 84 in Washington County is all but out, according to CONSOL Vice President Tom Hoffman. “We’ve now reached the main area where the fire was concentrated and probably started,” Hoffman said. “There is a pile of rubble blocking the beltway entry tunnel,” Hoffman said.
As the final step in battling the fire, Hoffman said, crews will build dams across the tunnel, in effect creating an area like a swimming pool about 6 feet deep and 200 feet long in the tunnel.
“If there is still hot or smoldering material, it’s probably in the bottom of this pile,” Hoffman said. “We’re in the final stages.”
The mine fire was discovered around 9:30 a.m. Monday in the beltline tunnel, about 660 feet underground in Amwell Township. The mine is located about 300 feet south of Route 40, 35 miles northwest of Uniontown. CONSOL immediately brought in its mine rescue crews from 10 mines in four states. The crews have been working around the clock to contain the fire and put it out. About 100 miners who were in Mine 84 when the fire began were safely evacuated using routine methods to transport them out of the mine.
“I don’t think there’s another company in the country that could marshal the resources that we did to bring this under control so quickly,” Hoffman said. “This really was a team effort, and all the time and money we spend on preparing mine rescue teams really paid off.”
Hoffman said that in addition to the 100 or so members of the mine rescue crews, several dozen senior coal operators also were involved in developing the plan to extinguish the fire. They set up a command post about 3 miles from the fire site and consulted with federal and state officials, though it was up to the company to develop the strategy for fighting the fire.
“This is our mine and our fire to put out,” Hoffman said, adding that he’s not certain how long it will take to declare the fire extinguished once the fire area is flooded with water. “It’s a matter of days now, if not less. We’ll have to look at the gas levels.”
The levels of carbon monoxide and hydrogen are used to determine if a mine fire is still burning. Low carbon dioxide and high hydrogen levels indicate that the fire is out.
“We don’t want to be premature and have to fight the fire all over again,” Hoffman said.
Most of the miners have been working this past week despite the halt of coal production. The miners have been assisting with the firefighting efforts by laying pipe and providing supplies.
Hoffman said many will remain employed during the cleanup efforts, though there will be a period while the cause of the fire is investigated that operations probably will be shut down.
“Our hope is once the investigation is completed, the continuous miners will be able to run, even though the longwall miners can’t,” Hoffman said.
Longwall machines mine an area 1,000 feet wide and 2 miles deep. Continuous mining machines use a toothed drum to carve out smaller passages, preparing the area for longwall mining equipment, Hoffman said.
This is the first fire in the history of the mine, which opened in the 1930s. No CONSOL facility has experienced a fire since the blaze at the Loveridge Mine in Fairview, W.Va., in 1999.
That mine remained closed for two years.