Report of the Committee on Coal Mine Fires

Abstract

Some of the fires now burning in the coalfields started in the twenties or thirties though some of them are of later origin. A number of fires were extensive in area and intensive in magnitude and it was therefore difficult to control them, chiefly because they were at shallow cover. Flooding of the fire areas was not practicable in these cases as inundation of the workings upto the level of the fire involved raising of water level upto a point which was either not possible to achieve or would have resulted in flooding of neighbouring collieries or other parts of the same mine.