The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1947-01-09
Ohio's Underground
Fire

more than so years.
Rills of hot water run through the
woods, cisterns steam and dry up,
vegetables are dug partly cooked, and
heating systems are unnecessary in
the 12-square mile area under which
the flames still spread.
Pavements in the district buckle
and sink and little jets of smoke and
gas spit from fissures in the baked
earth like so many miniature volcan~
oes. There is the smell of charred
carbon all over the area.
Strikers Started Fire in 1884
The subterranean fire started in
1884 after striking miners had
drenched some loaded coal cars with
oil and dumped the whole blazing
mess down five different mine
shafts. That ended forever the
chances of them or any other miners
working in that coal mine.
Millions of tons of coal, worth
more than $5O,OOO,OOO already have
been consumed. Despite repeated at
tempts to extinguish or retard it, the
fire threatens to burn for hundreds
of years unless some successful way
to stop it it is contrived.
Old timers around New Straitsville
recall seeing a huge beech tree
growing on Queer Creek, in the west
ern part of the county, where the
stream runs for several miles be-
tween 120-foot cliffs of solid rock, on
the bark of which some unidentified
traveller had carved This is the
road to hell-1782." That was done
102 years before the mine caught
fire.
Shaft Mine
The blazing mine is a shaft mine
In shaft mining large columns of
coal are left standing in every cham
Der and passage to bolster the over
| lying rocks while the balance of the
coal is being taken out. The deeper
the shaft, the larger such columns
must be. If the coal is tender" the
columns must be larger still. That
is because of the heavy weight of
the ceiling.
/ Miners wark forward taking out a.
! bout 66 per cent of the coal, opening
new chambers and passages and
leaving new columns until the limit
of the plant has been reached. Then,
beginning in the far end of the ex-
cavation, the columns are cut away,
one by one, and the coal composing
them is sent to the surface.
When an area of several acres has
been worked out the miners seek
safety around strong column still
supporting the ceiling while the roof
falls in. They appear unperturbed by
the resounding crashes and seem to
think little of their danger. AS col
umns are cut away crash after crash
occurs until the miners have worked
to the bottom of the shaft.
Ground Sinks
If the seam of coal is five or six
feet thick and the workings are only
$50 or 200 feet underground, great
chasms frequently open up directly
over where the coal has been mined
out. Houses and parts of villages a.
bove mines often are displaced OF
damaged by the sinkings below them
Coal strata in the Ohio coal field
which is part of the Appalachian coaI
belt running from Pennsylvania to
Georgia through parts of nine states
are divided into upper, lower and
barren measures 400 to 600 feet
thick.
In the lower measures there are
II to Is different beds of coal. The
upper measures have nine beds Of
coal, of which the lowest, Pittsburgh
coal, is the most valuable. The bar.
rem measures have no coal worth
raining and only one bed that can be
worked at all.
Ohio Coal Fields
Coal mined in the Mahoning Val
ley, Tuscarawas Valley, ard in the
Salineville, Coshocton, Sherredsville
Cambridge, Jackson, Jackson, Iron,
ton, Dennison, Steubenville, ant
GAINESVILLE regions all is from some
one Of the lower beds.
Coal in the Hooking Valley is
mined from the Nelsonville or great,
vein of the states lower measures
which is the most extensively mined
in Ohio.
] The Nelsonville vein is the thick
est vein in the state and rises in
many places in the Hooking Valley
to 10 feet or more. Nowhere in the
region is it less than five thick
/ Mines in 30 Counties
| Ohio has more than 10000 square
miles of soft coal land from which
coal is extensively mined in %
counties. They are Athens, Perry,
Jackson, Hooking, Stark, Belmont,
! Guernsey, Columbiana, Mahoning,
Jefferson, Medina, Trumbull, Tusca-
rawas, Carroll, Meigs, Lawrence,
Wayne, Muskingum, Summit, Gallia,
Portage, Vinton, Coshocton, Harri-
son, Holmes, Washington, Morgan,
Noble, and Scioto counties.