The Department of Environmental Protection Wednesday announced a coal refuse pile fire that has been burning for more than four months on parts of a seven-acre tract of land above abandoned mines in Fell Township, Lackawanna County, has been extinguished. Minichi Inc. of Pittston was contracted by DEP to extinguish the blaze.
“The contractor worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week these past few months, sometimes through bitter cold temperatures, to successfully expose and put out the fire,” DEP Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program Manager Michael C. Korb said. “We are confident the job is complete.”
DEP was first notified of the fire in December 2013 by the Grattan-Singer Volunteer Hose Company in Fell Township. Minichi, Inc. began work to extinguish the fire in January of 2014.
Extinguishing the fire involved excavating more than 100 vertical feet of material to get to the source, pouring about 156 million gallons of water from the Lackawanna River and more than 34,000 gallons of foam on the fire. The contractor also transferred more than 220,000 cubic yards of coal refuse from the pile to be quenched in a separate area on the site.
During the height of the fire, DEP’s Air Quality staff monitored a 1.5-mile area near the site for any dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide. Results showed very low levels.
“Our air sampling during the peak of the fire indicated that the public was not at risk of inhaling dangerous fumes,” Northeast Regional Office Director Mike Bedrin said.
DEP’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation personnel have drilled five boreholes at the site to monitor underground heat until the end of the month. Two of those boreholes were used to locate an underground coal seam to ensure the fire did not ignite the seam.
The cost to extinguish the fire was $2,061,227. Funding was provided by a grant from the U.S. Abandoned Mine Reclamation Trust Fund, which is subsidized by the coal industry through fees paid on each ton of coal mined.
