Fire Under the Streets

Not many coal-mining towns are pure-aired health resorts, but Carbondale, Pa., 15 miles northeast of Scranton, has a special problem. Deep under the streets of a good-sized part of the town (pop. 14,000), a stubborn fire has burned for 13 years, defying half measures to put it out. Fumes seep out of the ground, creep into homes and stores. The soil underfoot is always warm; grass stays green in the dead of winter; and roses bloom in December. Carbondale people do not enjoy these distinctions, and last week they were looking forward to getting rid of them. At long last, the state and federal governments have agreed to extinguish the great fire by the drastic, costly method of digging it out of the ground.

Under Carbondale run four thick seams of anthracite coal. Over the years, mining operations honeycombed the earth beneath the city with tunnels. Where the seams came close enough to the hilly surface, great machines stripped away the worthless overburden, exposing the coal. The city government found abandoned stripping craters handy places to dump garbage and rubbish. The Hudson Coal Co. urged the city fathers to stop this sloppy practice, but its warning was ignored. In 1946 the rubbish started burning, and before it could be extinguished, the fire ignited the coal. Flames raced through hundreds of yards of abandoned gas-filled tunnels, and started new fires in many places under the city streets.

Fumes in Bedrooms. At first nobody worried much. But soon, noxious fumes containing a little carbon monoxide and a great deal of carbon dioxide began coming out of crevices. Firemen pointed their hoses down the biggest cracks; for a while the fumes turned to steam, but the fire burned on. In 1952 a sleeping couple was killed by fumes creeping into their bedroom. On one night in 1954, fifteen people were overcome. Since the fire started, several hundred residents of the parboiled area have been nauseated or knocked out.

The state and federal governments tried to put out the fire by drilling 500 bore holes and pumping floods of silt-bearing water down them. But the deep-down fire still burned. The fumes got so bad that mine officials kept watch round the clock to waken residents in case of a sudden increase of escaping gas. They knew that the Lackawanna River, toward which the fire was eating its way, would be no barrier. The fire could pass under its bed, and eat its way under the city's business section on the far side.

After long debate, federal officials decided that Carbondale's unusual plight made it deserving of federal help. The present agreement makes the stricken city an urban redevelopment district. Two million dollars will come from the Federal Government, $1,000,000 from the state. Homes and other real estate in the threatened area (130 acres) will be-bought at fair prices. Then massive dragline excavators will attack the fire by digging huge trenches around the burning coal.

Nasty Job. The first trenches will connect stripped-out areas and so make a perimeter beyond which the fire cannot spread. Then the draglines will work in ward, digging both burning and nonburn-ing coal from the whole 130 acres. Says Mining Engineer Robert W. Bell, consultant to the Carbondale Redevelopment Authority: "A nasty job--rather dangerous." While working on burning coal, the dragline operators will be only the length of their booms (60 to 90 ft.) away from the hot stuff. Each scoopful will be dumped on high ground and sprayed with water. In many places the hot surface will have to be covered with clay to keep truck tires from softening.

The job is expected to take at least three years. When it is finished, the site will be filled, graded and, if possible, reforested. Eventually some of it may become a park--a fitting monument to the city fathers who dumped combustible rubbish against a seam of coal.

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