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05/04/2005

Fire Underground

Music is alive and well, at least in this part of the country. As a
self appointed, completely unqualified music critic, I’ve written
before about concerts of the New York Philharmonic and its
guest performers at Lincoln Center. Of course, New York
audiences are quite sophisticated, knowing for example, not to
clap at the end of all but the final movement of a symphony.
Last night’s audience in Avery Fisher Hall was not the typical
audience but was much less inhibited and highly enthusiastic.
They had every right to be enthusiastic about “America’s Youth
in Concert”, a concert featuring selected instrumental and choral
groups from high schools in the tri-state New York area.

At times, the joint was really rocking, every bit as much as when
I attended a joint Philharmonic-Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz concert.
The big attraction for us was our granddaughter appearing with
her high school’s “Select Choir” in softer numbers, but finishing
with a rousing “When the Saints Go Marching In” accompanied
by a four-piece jazz combo. Overall, my wife and I were amazed
at the talent of these young musicians. There was a veritable
plethora of good music. Therein lies my only criticism. By the
time our granddaughter’s choral group finished their numbers,
three hours had passed since the beginning of the concert and the
program indicated five more choral groups would follow! Old
Bortrum had to leave, not wanting to fall asleep while driving
home.

Let’s turn now to a state bordering our New York tri-state region,
Pennsylvania. I’m not sure whether the dozen residents of
Centralia, Pennsylvania should also be classified as courageous,
foolhardy or just plain stubborn. An article by Kevin Krajick,
“Fire in the Hole”, in the May issue of Smithsonian, concerns a
major problem afflicting Centralia and other areas all over the
world. I believe that I’ve written about this problem before but
the Smithsonian article brings the situation up to date and it fits
right into the current worries about our sources of energy and
global warming. The problem is coal on fire.

Many millions of years ago, Pennsylvania was covered with
large areas of swampy vegetation. The vegetation died and
decayed, forming peat. (In fact, the so-called Carboniferous
period, ranging from 360 to 286 million years ago, in North
America is split into two periods, one being the Pennsylvanian.)
As centuries passed, sediments covered the peat, not only putting
pressure on the peat but also raising its temperature. As a result,
the peat was transformed into lignite, a low-grade form of coal.

Coal is a fascinating material. It doesn’t have a chemical
formula but consists of carbon and various other elements and
compounds, including water. In some areas, the sediments piled
up higher, increasing the heat and pressure even more, causing
the lignite to lose some of its water and other compounds. It
became bituminous, or “soft” coal. However, in what is now
eastern Pennsylvania, the heat and pressures built up even
further. The soft coal lost more of the stuff other than carbon
and the result was anthracite, “hard” coal. Hard coal is black
with a metallic luster and is more than 90 percent carbon.

Eastern Pennsylvania became the source of most of the hard coal
mined in the United States, while the western part of the state
was loaded with the softer variety. Hard coal, being almost all
carbon, burns cleanly with little smoke and pollution. Burning
soft coal, on the other hand, gives off copious amounts of smoke
and particulate matter; it is not clean burning. As a child in the
1930s and 40s living in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, one of my
tasks was to shovel the hard coal into the furnace, which during
the winter months was kept burning continuously night and day.

It was a shock when I went off to graduate school in Pittsburgh
in western Pennsylvania. Trains in those days carried a coal car
in back of the locomotive and vast amounts of smoke were
emitted from the locomotive’s smokestack. I assume soft coal
was the fuel. It certainly was the fuel of choice for the homes in
Pittsburgh, which in those days was known for its legendary dark
days in which the sun would be blotted out in midday by the
smoke and pollution.

At the University of Pittsburgh, I met my wife-to-be, who came
from a small town some 40 miles from Pittsburgh. Coal mines
underlie many homes in the area. Since those days back in the
1940s, coal has been replaced by oil and gas, the steel industry is
gone and most mines in Pennsylvania were abandoned. Where
mining continued, it was strip mining. Not entirely, however;
witness the case of those Pennsylvania miners who were rescued
not too long ago.

Getting back to Centralia, it too is a town overlying a honeycomb
of mines, with their network of connecting tunnels and chambers.
It started 43 years ago, possibly when burning of trash over an
abandoned mine ignited a fire in the mines. This fire continues
today and, unless some huge sum of money becomes available, a
highly unlikely scenario, the fire will continue for over 200 more
years before all the coal runs out. Centralia was the home of
some 1,100 people until the 1980s, when the federal government
funded an evacuation of the town. Today, except for the dozen
stubborn residents who refuse to give up their homes, the town is
an empty shell marked by smoking pits and fissures and streets
running to nowhere. The ground is so warm in spots that
tomatoes were harvested at Christmas!

Coal fires don’t get much press and you might think them a local
problem. However, Pennsylvania has 38 coal fires going on and
the U.S. has hundreds of fires ranging from Alabama to Alaska.
The oldest known coal fire is the Burning Mountain fire in
Australia – it’s been burning for 6,000 years! Let’s turn to
China, which has one of the richest anthracite deposits in the
world, covering a range of some 3,000 miles and depths up to
125 feet. China mines 2 billion tons of coal a year. That’s a ton
for every person in China. We keep hearing about the demand
for oil in China being one factor that keeps gas prices high here.
However, coal supplies 75 percent of China’s present energy
consumption.

China has more than 50, perhaps hundreds of coal fires and, like
many things in China, some are on a grand scale. Estimates of
the amount of coal burned in these fires range from 20 to 200
million tons every year. The burning coal emits carbon
monoxide, carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas that’s
more detrimental to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. It’s
estimated that the China fires may contribute 1 percent of the
world’s total carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

How do you fight these fires? Remember, they may be burning
as deep as 100 to 300 feet underground. It seems like the only
sure way is to dig them out and fill them over with soil. But
digging can also open them up to more oxygen from the air and
they only burn more rapidly. Furthermore, strip mining has
opened up the coal to the surface and underground fires can burst
up to the surface causing significant emissions not only of carbon
monoxide but also sulfur and nitrogen compounds along with
arsenic, fluorine and selenium – not a healthy mix!

I was surprised to read that in my birth state of Colorado a coal
fire that had been burning for a hundred years broke through in
2002 and ignited a forest fire that burned 43 buildings and
12,000 acres. To put out the forest fire cost over 6 million
dollars and the coal mine continues to burn!

Well, the world is burning underground and, sporadically, above
ground, as when bombs go off in Iraq or Lebanon. Needless to
say, we’re glad to see our Editor, Brian Trumbore, home safely
from the latter!

Allen F. Bortrum



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-05/04/2005-      
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Dr. Bortrum

05/04/2005

Fire Underground

Music is alive and well, at least in this part of the country. As a
self appointed, completely unqualified music critic, I’ve written
before about concerts of the New York Philharmonic and its
guest performers at Lincoln Center. Of course, New York
audiences are quite sophisticated, knowing for example, not to
clap at the end of all but the final movement of a symphony.
Last night’s audience in Avery Fisher Hall was not the typical
audience but was much less inhibited and highly enthusiastic.
They had every right to be enthusiastic about “America’s Youth
in Concert”, a concert featuring selected instrumental and choral
groups from high schools in the tri-state New York area.

At times, the joint was really rocking, every bit as much as when
I attended a joint Philharmonic-Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz concert.
The big attraction for us was our granddaughter appearing with
her high school’s “Select Choir” in softer numbers, but finishing
with a rousing “When the Saints Go Marching In” accompanied
by a four-piece jazz combo. Overall, my wife and I were amazed
at the talent of these young musicians. There was a veritable
plethora of good music. Therein lies my only criticism. By the
time our granddaughter’s choral group finished their numbers,
three hours had passed since the beginning of the concert and the
program indicated five more choral groups would follow! Old
Bortrum had to leave, not wanting to fall asleep while driving
home.

Let’s turn now to a state bordering our New York tri-state region,
Pennsylvania. I’m not sure whether the dozen residents of
Centralia, Pennsylvania should also be classified as courageous,
foolhardy or just plain stubborn. An article by Kevin Krajick,
“Fire in the Hole”, in the May issue of Smithsonian, concerns a
major problem afflicting Centralia and other areas all over the
world. I believe that I’ve written about this problem before but
the Smithsonian article brings the situation up to date and it fits
right into the current worries about our sources of energy and
global warming. The problem is coal on fire.

Many millions of years ago, Pennsylvania was covered with
large areas of swampy vegetation. The vegetation died and
decayed, forming peat. (In fact, the so-called Carboniferous
period, ranging from 360 to 286 million years ago, in North
America is split into two periods, one being the Pennsylvanian.)
As centuries passed, sediments covered the peat, not only putting
pressure on the peat but also raising its temperature. As a result,
the peat was transformed into lignite, a low-grade form of coal.

Coal is a fascinating material. It doesn’t have a chemical
formula but consists of carbon and various other elements and
compounds, including water. In some areas, the sediments piled
up higher, increasing the heat and pressure even more, causing
the lignite to lose some of its water and other compounds. It
became bituminous, or “soft” coal. However, in what is now
eastern Pennsylvania, the heat and pressures built up even
further. The soft coal lost more of the stuff other than carbon
and the result was anthracite, “hard” coal. Hard coal is black
with a metallic luster and is more than 90 percent carbon.

Eastern Pennsylvania became the source of most of the hard coal
mined in the United States, while the western part of the state
was loaded with the softer variety. Hard coal, being almost all
carbon, burns cleanly with little smoke and pollution. Burning
soft coal, on the other hand, gives off copious amounts of smoke
and particulate matter; it is not clean burning. As a child in the
1930s and 40s living in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, one of my
tasks was to shovel the hard coal into the furnace, which during
the winter months was kept burning continuously night and day.

It was a shock when I went off to graduate school in Pittsburgh
in western Pennsylvania. Trains in those days carried a coal car
in back of the locomotive and vast amounts of smoke were
emitted from the locomotive’s smokestack. I assume soft coal
was the fuel. It certainly was the fuel of choice for the homes in
Pittsburgh, which in those days was known for its legendary dark
days in which the sun would be blotted out in midday by the
smoke and pollution.

At the University of Pittsburgh, I met my wife-to-be, who came
from a small town some 40 miles from Pittsburgh. Coal mines
underlie many homes in the area. Since those days back in the
1940s, coal has been replaced by oil and gas, the steel industry is
gone and most mines in Pennsylvania were abandoned. Where
mining continued, it was strip mining. Not entirely, however;
witness the case of those Pennsylvania miners who were rescued
not too long ago.

Getting back to Centralia, it too is a town overlying a honeycomb
of mines, with their network of connecting tunnels and chambers.
It started 43 years ago, possibly when burning of trash over an
abandoned mine ignited a fire in the mines. This fire continues
today and, unless some huge sum of money becomes available, a
highly unlikely scenario, the fire will continue for over 200 more
years before all the coal runs out. Centralia was the home of
some 1,100 people until the 1980s, when the federal government
funded an evacuation of the town. Today, except for the dozen
stubborn residents who refuse to give up their homes, the town is
an empty shell marked by smoking pits and fissures and streets
running to nowhere. The ground is so warm in spots that
tomatoes were harvested at Christmas!

Coal fires don’t get much press and you might think them a local
problem. However, Pennsylvania has 38 coal fires going on and
the U.S. has hundreds of fires ranging from Alabama to Alaska.
The oldest known coal fire is the Burning Mountain fire in
Australia – it’s been burning for 6,000 years! Let’s turn to
China, which has one of the richest anthracite deposits in the
world, covering a range of some 3,000 miles and depths up to
125 feet. China mines 2 billion tons of coal a year. That’s a ton
for every person in China. We keep hearing about the demand
for oil in China being one factor that keeps gas prices high here.
However, coal supplies 75 percent of China’s present energy
consumption.

China has more than 50, perhaps hundreds of coal fires and, like
many things in China, some are on a grand scale. Estimates of
the amount of coal burned in these fires range from 20 to 200
million tons every year. The burning coal emits carbon
monoxide, carbon dioxide and methane, a greenhouse gas that’s
more detrimental to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. It’s
estimated that the China fires may contribute 1 percent of the
world’s total carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

How do you fight these fires? Remember, they may be burning
as deep as 100 to 300 feet underground. It seems like the only
sure way is to dig them out and fill them over with soil. But
digging can also open them up to more oxygen from the air and
they only burn more rapidly. Furthermore, strip mining has
opened up the coal to the surface and underground fires can burst
up to the surface causing significant emissions not only of carbon
monoxide but also sulfur and nitrogen compounds along with
arsenic, fluorine and selenium – not a healthy mix!

I was surprised to read that in my birth state of Colorado a coal
fire that had been burning for a hundred years broke through in
2002 and ignited a forest fire that burned 43 buildings and
12,000 acres. To put out the forest fire cost over 6 million
dollars and the coal mine continues to burn!

Well, the world is burning underground and, sporadically, above
ground, as when bombs go off in Iraq or Lebanon. Needless to
say, we’re glad to see our Editor, Brian Trumbore, home safely
from the latter!

Allen F. Bortrum