Hill End Colliery Fire
The Hill End Colliery fire was an underground coal-seam fire. it burned from, at latest, August 1930 to at least early 1945, and most probably as late as June 1949. The impact of the fire was magnified by its close proximity to the mining town of Cessnock, New South Wales, Australia. The worst and most spectacular outbreak of the fire occurred on 8, 9 and 10 March 1933. Hill End Colliery The Hill End Colliery was a small ‘unassociated’ colliery, operated by the Hill End Colliery Company in the vast South Maitland coalfields, South Maitland Coalfield. It was located just off Maitland Road, about a mile from the Post Office at Cessnock, in a gully on the back of a hill that overlooks the town. It was operating by 1888. It employed only 20 men in 1929. Its coal was shipped via coal sidings, at Caledonia station on the Cessnock branch line of the South Maitland Railway. It was brought there from the mine in Minecart, skips over a light railway that ran along Melbourne Street, in A ...
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Coal-seam Fire
A coal-seam fire is a burning of an outcrop or underground coal seam. Most coal-seam fires exhibit smouldering combustion, particularly underground coal-seam fires, because of limited atmospheric oxygen availability. Coal-seam fire instances on Earth date back several million years. Due to thermal insulation and the avoidance of rain/snow extinguishment by the crust, underground coal-seam fires are the most persistent fires on Earth and can burn for thousands of years, like Burning Mountain in Australia. Coal-seam fires can be ignited by self-heating of low-temperature oxidation, lightning, wildfires and even arson. Coal-seam fires have been slowly shaping the lithosphere and changing atmosphere, but this pace has become faster and more extensive in modern times, triggered by mining. Coal fires are a serious health and safety hazard, affecting the environment by releasing toxic fumes, reigniting grass, brush, or forest fires, and causing subsidence of surface infrastructure s ...
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