Utah’s Lila Canyon coal mine, located in Emery County’s section of the Book Cliffs, caught fire Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022, and continues to burn as the mine operator attempts to drill into the mine to help devise a plan for putting out the fire burning in a coal pillar.A Utah coal mine burning underground since Sept. 20 is still too dangerous to enter and it could be weeks or even longer before the fire is out and the mine resumes coal production, federal officials said Friday.
The operator is Emery County Coal Resources , a subsidiary of Ohio-based American Consolidated Natural Resources , which has not responded to repeated requests for comment. ACNR is the reorganized company that emerged from the bankruptcy filed by Murray Energy, which owns several Utah mines. The company reported the fire Sept. 20 to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, of MSHA, which immediately ordered the mine’s closure and the evacuation of all personnel.
In underground coal mining, operators cut through coal seams leaving behind pillars of coal to hold up the mine ceiling. At Lila Canyon, one of these pillars caught fire, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM, meanwhile, granted emergency approval on Sept. 28 for the operator to drill up to four 4-inch-diameter boreholes needed to access the mine so that its air can be sampled and flame-suppressing gasses injected inside, according to“Evaluating the mine atmosphere will allow ECCR to come up with a plan to extinguish the fire by monitoring gas concentrations and possibly injecting nitrogen and or other compounds through the boreholes,” states the BLM’s Sept.