{"id":34371,"date":"2016-05-08T08:06:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T15:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/coal-seam-fires-again-spark-wildfires-near-healy-coal-mine\/"},"modified":"2016-05-08T08:06:09","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T15:06:09","slug":"coal-seam-fires-again-spark-wildfires-near-healy-coal-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/coal-seam-fires-again-spark-wildfires-near-healy-coal-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Coal seam fires again spark wildfires near Healy, coal mine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 Underground fires in coal country near the interior Alaska community of Healy have again touched off wildfires on the surface, putting forest officials on alert to keep them from spreading to populated areas.<\/p>\n<p>Nine coal seam fires last year burned almost 800 acres, or about 1.25 square miles. Burning coal has lit four wildfires this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sort of an annual rite of spring or early summer,\u201d said Tim Mowry, a spokesman for the Division of Forestry in Fairbanks. \u201cWhen conditions are right \u2014 it\u2019s warm, it\u2019s dry, it\u2019s windy \u2014 they can sometimes come to the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The largest wildfire has burned 640 acres, or about 1 square mile.<\/p>\n<p>A 2010 research paper by University of Alaska Fairbanks and Division of Forestry researchers said spontaneous coal combustion is believed to be the primary natural cause of most coal seam fires. Lightning and forest fires cause others.<\/p>\n<p>Coal has been mined near Healy since 1918. Usibelli Coal Mine has been in the area since 1943 and the underground fires are near its lease area 115 miles south of Fairbanks, mine spokeswoman Lorali Simon said by email.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey maintain a consistent simmer, and if a big wind comes up, they can fan the flames and start a big forest fire,\u201d she said. In winter, Simon said, if there\u2019s a temperature inversion that acts like a cap to block normal air circulation, coal seam fires can smoke up valleys.<\/p>\n<p>A coal seam fire was suspected in a 2009 wildfire that burned 254 square miles of boreal forest in 11 days, according to the UAF a research paper.<\/p>\n<p>Wildfires started by burning coal seams come with an extra set of hazards for firefighters, Mowry said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t really do much with them,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to send firefighters in there and have them fall into these coal seams. The ground could collapse around these things. It\u2019s not really safe to fight them on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They also emit harmful, noxious fumes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we\u2019re left to do is monitor them from the air,\u201d Mowry said. \u201cOr if we\u2019re going to take any suppression action on them, we\u2019re going to do that from the air by dropping, usually, water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that areas near the underground fires have often burned before and there\u2019s not a concentration of highly flammable forest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe just try to keep them contained within these old burn scars so they don\u2019t get out and spread and threaten the community of Healy,\u201d Mowry said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANCHORAGE \u2014 Underground fires in coal country near the interior Alaska community of Healy have again touched off wildfires on the surface, putting forest officials on alert to keep them from spreading to populated areas. Nine coal seam fires last year burned almost 800 acres, or about 1.25 square miles. Burning coal has lit four [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34371"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}