130-year-old Chinese fire put out
 

A fire that broke out more than 100 years ago at a Chinese coalfield has finally been extinguished, reports say.
In the last four years, firefighters have spent $12m in efforts to put out the flames at Liuhuanggou colliery, near Urumqi in Xinjiang province.

While ablaze, the fire burned up an estimated 1.8m tons of coal every year, according to China's official Xinhua news agency.

Local historians said the fire first broke out in 1874, Itar-Tass reported.

Hou Xuecheng, head of the Xinjiang Coalfield Firefighting Project Office, said the Liuhuanggou fire was the largest among eight major coalfield fire areas in Xinjiang.

The burning coal emitted 100,000 tons of harmful gases - including carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide - and 40,000 tons of ashes every year, Mr Hou told Xinhua.

The continuing blaze is also thought to have caused environmental damage to the region.

Xinjiang accounts for 1.8 trillion tons, or 40.6%, of China's total coal reserves.




http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/3978329.stm

:eek7

dddamn

East LA is worse.

Can we still do the fire drills?

And people are saying Americans are stupid?

My toilet seat is the ceiling of your IQ

whow...

:eek7 :eek7 :eek7

"1.8m tons of coal every year"

The fire must have been hot as hell and must have been huge and required tremendous resources to put it out. Didn't the fires at the WTC burn for a year? That is small compared to this.

You're hurting my feelings. Please don't. :Graucho

thats crazy

The latest in power generating technology calls for coal seams to be burnt in place and the heat generated from the fires to be used to generate electricity.

I don't think that they quite want to do it on the level of this fire though.

Well I have a fire in my loins that has been going on for 27 years...

let' me see, it's interesting and scary at the same time.

:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

:helpme

Not even close to a waste of coal there. :(

Wow! that's freak!