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The author mentions a 56 year old coal fire in Pennsylvania for some reason. It's not the most extreme example he could have reached for. The New Straitsville m
by justin66 8y ago
The author mentions a 56 year old coal fire in Pennsylvania for some reason. It's not the most extreme example he could have reached for. The New Straitsville mine fire in Ohio has been burning for 134 years, and is still slowly spreading.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/New_Straitsville_Mine_Fire http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/New_Straitsville_Mine_Fi...
- empath75 8y agoThe Centralia fire is the most famous one by far.
- justin66 8y agoI've never noticed this to be the case, but I'm from the area (a few hours from each site). Looking online it appears you're right: one fire is 40x bigger and much older, but the new one gets 20x the google hits. I think the newer fire, by virtue of its location and having started more recently, is probably a lot more photogenic because of the infrastructure damage it causes.
- toyg 8y agoIt depends on your parameters - Yanartas / “Mount Chimera” was in the Iliad, it’s hard to beat that level of fame. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanartaş https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanartaş
- fromthestart 8y ago> It is estimated that more than two hundred square miles of coal has burned Why would they measure the amount burned in square miles??? How thick? This measurement is meaningless!
- mannykannot 8y agoGranted, it's not a measure of how much coal has been burned, but it is a measure of how far the fire has spread.
- burfog 8y agoAt only 200 square miles, we can fix it. Assuming the area is square, the perimeter is just 56.56 miles. We can go around with a tunnel boring machine, replacing coal with a concrete-lined tube. We can dig a trench, like a road cut or canal, lining it just as we sometimes line our road cuts and canals.
- Synaesthesia 8y agoYeah only 200 square miles
- burfog 8y agoThe best case is a circle, giving a perimeter of 50 miles. Some other projects to compare it by: 94 miles total for the three bores of the Channel Tunnel 120 miles for the Suez canal, finished 149 years ago 51 miles for the Panama canal, finished 104 years ago with steam shovels Clearly, we can do this.
- bdamm 8y agoIf it were laid out on an identifiable surface, then perhaps that could be done. But veins of coal in the earth branch unpredictably in 3D space. You'd be following a fractal surface.
- lucisferre 8y agoIt may not be possible to know or accurately estimate the scope of it.
- anon_cow1111 8y agoWell, coal is mostly carbon and its atomic radius is around 70pm. Converting miles to metric and calculating based on that, we can assume at minimum 72 liters of coal was burned, but not more than the total volume of earth.
- fleetside72 8y agoi lol
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- TallGuyShort 8y agoThey measure it in square miles because it's most direct impact on our way of life is at the surface. The thickness is unlikely to be uniform and the volume of the coal doesn't exactly tell the lay person much.
- phillc73 8y agoThis is just up the road from where I grew up in Australia and has been burning for 6,000 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain
- ericnyamu 8y agoGod forgot to put out the burning bush, lol
- justin66 8y agoThat one is rather refreshing compared to the New Straitsville and Centralia fires, which were both directly attributable to some pretty blatant human stupidity. New Straitsville is attributed to arson by some strikers and Centralia was caused by an attempt at cleaning up a landfill situated in a former coal mine, an attempt that relied on methods worthy of Mr. Carlson from WKRP in Cincinnati.