On 15 February 1907, the Wilkes-Barre Record re-published an article on coal mine fires by R. V. Norris that had appeared in the Engineer and Mining Journal. The article described the causes of coal mine fires and told of some of the methods of fighting them. Included was a description of the the Big Lick Fire which occurred on 9 December 1901 at the Big Lick Colliery, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
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COAL MINE FIRES
Precautions to be Used as Methods of Attack
R. V. Norris Writes Instructively on This Important Phase of Mine Operation – Gives Valuable Observations from His Experience
R. V. Norris of this city has an interesting article on mine fires and the manner of fighting them in the recent issue of the Engineer and Mining Journal. It is as follows:
Taking up the subject of mine fires, I might say that it is a normal condition to have a mine fire, somewhere in the anthracite mining region. In fact, we always have three or four on hand as a little side amusement, and a good many of them are very serious ones. As to the causes of mine fires, the principal cause is from the miner’s pen lamp; I believe that 95 per cent of the fires could be traced to that cause. When the lamp is full it stands up very nicely and is perfectly safe; but when it is nearly empty the wick will tip over easily, bringing the flame in contact with the coal or wood.
CAUSES OF MINE FIRES
A great majority of fires occur in underground pump rooms, when the pump engineer is pretty sure that the boss is not around he takes a little snooze, and sets his lamp on a board beside him. His snooze lasts longer than he expects, his lamp tips over, and soon he is making tracks as fast as he can to escape the fire that is brought about in that way.
Another cause is hanging open lamps on time, which miners will very often do. A few fires start from explosions of gas, and although such accidents are likely to start a fire,still the number so occurring is small. Occasional fires also come from dumping hot ashes along the caved outcrop of a seam.
Some fires start from the miners leaving feeder of gas burning in their rooms when they quit work. In the working places in gaseous mines there will often be small feeders along the floor or the roof; these are sometimes lighted to burn out the gas and get rid of it, and then the men often go home and leave this gas burning.
Such a fire I saw in the “Pennsylvania” Colliery some eight years ago. In the bottom seam the breasts went up about 220 feet on perhaps a 6-degree pitch, and were full of coal. The miners left a feeder burning in the face of the breast and the fire got down into the coal; a hose was pulled up the manway and the top was watered without notable success. The burning coal was then hauled out, which cured the fire in short order. It took about sixteen hours to load out the fire and send it up to the surface.
Another cause of fire is sparks from lamps or inside locomotives. The latter are now prohibited by law, but the use of these locomotives already installed is not forbidden. The same danger applies also to electrical installation inside, and from sparking or through the breaking down of the insulation. Another very common cause of fires is from mine carpenters and timbermen working with open lamps when they are required to use glass lanterns or safety lamps in gaseous workings.
The first notice that you get of a fire, as a rule, unless of course you have an explosion, is the smell of smoke. Occasionally you see the flames, but in nineteen out of twenty mine fired no evidence of flames is visible. This is principally due to the fact that it is usually impossible to get near the seat of the fire.
In describing several typical fires they have come under my observation, I do not say that they have all been bad fires, but each one does present points of interest from a technical view.
THE BIG LICK FIRE
The Big Lick Colliery was opened about 1842, in the Lykens Vein, in the extreme southwesterly end of the anthracite region. It is next to the last colliery there. The slope is about 1,00 feet long, on a pitch varying about 40 degrees at the top to 70 degrees at the bottom.
On the 9th of December 1901, there was a gang of carpenters working in the third lift, 900 feet down the slope, each lift being 300 feet. They came up about 4 o’clock in the afternoon; about 7 o’clock, flames were noticed in the slope. They is no question that they dropped sparks from their lamps when they pulled the bell wire to be hoisted.
The slope is one of the very oldest openings in the anthracite region. It had originally opened forty feet wide, as a four-track hoistway. On one side there was a pillar of bout 160 feet, and then, as the mining progressed, the slope was cribbed, leaving it about ten foot wide. It was the worst conceivable place for a mine fire. Withing forty minutes after the discovery of the fire the flames were leaping out from fifty to one hundred feet above the top.
There occurred a very exciting incident in connection with the start of the trouble. There were five men at the bottom of the slope when the fire broke out. They forgot that there was any other means of escape being too frightened, I suppose, and the engineer, fearing there might be someone down there let the car down to the bottom of the slope and left it there for about a minute, with the idea that anyone could get into it who might happen to be there, and could be brought up. When he pulled the car through the fire, five unconscious men were taken out of it, ad within thirty seconds from the time car landed the slope caved.
The whole force of officials arrived at the colliery at about noon on the 10th. At that time the flames were leaping up perhaps sixty feet and the mouth of the slope was so hot we could not get near it. There had been efforts to attack the fire from the inside, which might have cost some several valuable lives. on inspection by the officials the immediate decision was to close the slope as the only hope of conquering the fire. The gangways were about ten miles long, connecting three other collieries, so that absolute sealing was impossible.
METHOD OF TREATMENT
The fire trouble was close to the mouth of the slope; the height was perhaps twenty feet, and everything was red hot. By using sheet iron shields we were able to lay a series of railroad rails against the face of the slope. We then placed corrugated iron from the boiler house behind the rails and resting on them, which acted as a shield that we could work behind, even while it was red hot; and we piled clay against that.
The fire started on the 9th; by noon of the 11th we had the slope closed. In doing this a pipe was left protruding through the clay battery, with a view of taking temperatures and water gauges, and of analyzing the gases, which last, I may say, we did not do, where being too many other things of importance to consider.
REOPENING THE MINE
Then the idea of reopening was entertained and there was a very interesting method employed. In reopening the slope we had suction ventilation on the gangway; they drove a manway down through the pillar, parallel to the slope, to reopen in lifts. We found that so much of the old products of combustion that had been stored in the caved working were drawn into the slope as to make it dangerous for we put a force fan on the head of the slope itself as far as practicable. On reopening, which work is not practically completed, it was found that the fire had extended down about 500 feet, and that sloe was caved almost to the bottom. The temperature at the lowest point was now about 85 degrees, but by stopping the ventilation for a few minutes it rose to 135 degrees, showing what a long time it takes for rocks to cool where there is no access to air.
There were a series of cave holes along the outcrop at both sides of the slope, where the surface had fallen in. These had to be closed off, and hydraulic mining was employed to accomplish this. A large pump was used and forced a heavy stream of water on the surface above the holes, bringing in gravel, sand, and clay, and filled the openings for about a mile on either side of the fire.
A DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT
We had, incidentally, a very close call early in the work. The mouth of the slope had originally been lower here by about eight feet. This cut had been filled with refuse of various sorts and the engine house stood perhaps about 150 feet from the slope on this fill. After we had been working for some time and were all tired out, the whole crowd went to rest in this engine house, and if it had not been for the other shift coming in, I believe we would have been there yet; the gases worked through this filling, and the engine house was so full of carbon monoxide that we all experienced the symptoms of the “cold gray dawn of the morning after” for several days.
OTHER METHODS OF FIGHTING FIRES
Another method of handling a fire is illustrated work dome in the No. 6 tunnel of the Susquehanna Coal Company at Glen Lyon, Pennsylvania, above water level. It was at the head of a plane on the traveling way, and above it were broken workings. The fire was probably caused by sparks form the miners’ lamps. When discovered, the roof had fallen and there was a mass of fire covering a considerable area. The timbers along the broken territory were blazing; there was no water, and apparently no chance to fight it if it got above the gangway. The workmen, could, however, pass between the fire and the broken workings, so the first thing done was to bring in a lot of hand fire extinguishers, and to use them on the outskirts of the flames. It was a very high seam, with long timbers, but with the extinguisher streams the tops of the timbers were reached, and the flames extinguished. A bucket line was then formed up this plane, and water was hauled in in barrels; pails were passed from hand to hand up the incline in spite of the fact that the entry was on the wrong side of the fire, and the products of combustion made the air very bad.
A line of about 100 laborers and miners was employed passing buckets; as soon as a man worked at the head of the line for five minutes, he was sent down to the lower end, where the air was good; there he was allowed five minutes rest, and then, starting at the bottom, worked up to the head of the line again. We had the men passing water for several hours, and by that time the fire was surrounded and held fairly well on the outside.
The came the problem of getting in to the burning coal; the roof had fallen, and the fire was under it, and were were up against the problem of removing those enormous pieced of slate; they were drilled and blasted as they lay on top of a blazing furnace and it was not by any means a joyous job to load those holes. In the course of some fourteen or fifteen hours the fire was out and the fallen roof cleaned up an carried away.
TREATMENT BY FLOODING
Fires below water level can always be treated by flooding and it frequently the only way to deal with them; however, you are always up against the question of how much water to put in. There is a very simple way of calculating this if your working have to be flooded. You usually av records of the output of the mine and considering that it takes about a cubic yard of water to replace a ton of coal, you can usually get at the approximate amount of water required for flooding.
In flooding a colliery you have to find some means of getting a large supply. Perhaps the most prominent case of flooding in my experience was the Cameron Collery at Shamokin, Pennsylvania, where about two billion gallons of water from Shamokin Creek were sent in. Shamokin Creek is a stream perhaps thirty feet wide, and by blasting around the manway, in three or four days we were able to turn the entire stream into the colliery. in the flooding of that mine there was a very interesting problem; the fire was in the Baltimore seams Nos. 8 and 9. These were connected with other workings only by an inside shaft, but the top of this inside shaft was below water level. We did not want to flood all the workings, only the upper seams, and I. A. Stearns, then general manager, suggested the idea of putting a dam in this shaft. A dome-shaped dam was subsequently built, and it held successfully under water pressure; some difficulty was experienced in fitting in the keystone from underneath as no one cared to close himself permanently in the shaft.
The flooding was carried to the level of the creek, leaving all the lower seams open; their only connection was up the shaft, and the dam saved thousands of dollars, because, while flooding is a very sure and simple way of putting out a fire, it is hard to clean the mines up afterward; the water causes the roof to fall, and you have to reopen through broken territory almost all the traveling ways of your mine.
A very nasty fire occurred in 1902 in the Cameron Colliery, due to the tipping over of an ordinary miners’ lamp. The fire started in the pump room and soon extended to three breasts, about 100 feet along the gangway and about 300 feet high. It was one of the very few serious fires in my experience, that have been successfully fought back with hose and an exercise of grim perseverance.
The work was taken charge of by the superintendents, and they fought it back inch by inch. First they got around it, and cut it off, so that it could not readily extend, and then they fought their way through it, and worked for over a month before it was entirely extinguished.
IMPORTANT PRECAUTIONS
In fighting a fire it is always advisable to be on the intake-air side; you are then in the fresh air; on the return airways, the gases are something appalling, and the worst danger of carbon monoxide is that you go over suddenly. You feel all right until your knees give out, and then you fall, unable to move, making it likely you will die where you drop, unless assistance comes promptly.
In all collieries it is advisable to have the fan arranged so that it can be reversed, because in many instances you can thus turn the air current so as to make the fire burn back over its track. It is then possible to come up to the fire with the knowledge that it has got to burn back over its former course, and will find comparatively little to feed on.
Another celebrated fire, that at Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, which was before my time (back in the late seventies) was fought by extending a sheet iron tube up to the fire itself, carrying the ventilation in it, and eventually putting the fire out with water.
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From the Wilkes-Barre Record, 15 February 1907, via Newspapers.com.
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