In northeast Wyoming, fire departments are dealing with a unique type of fire, one that smolders beneath the ground and moves over time. They are known as coal seam fires and are not a new issue, but officials are struggling to find a solution.
“Fires caused by coal seams really deplete the resources that are available to respond to the next call,” said Stuart Burnham, fire marshal for the Campbell County Fire Department. “Just the amount of calls that come in is a challenge, and knowing that a lot of them are due to coal seams really is difficult because it's an issue that we haven't been able to find a resolution for.”
Coal seams are a type of coal deposit and can be dangerous because if they catch fire, they can continue to burn discreetly underground, even when there’s little indication of a fire aboveground. With the right conditions, though, such as wind and drought, they can burn surrounding vegetation near the seams surface and start a wildfire.
Burnham said Campbell County’s wildfire season this year has been an active one, but because the department didn’t start tracking coal seam fires as official wildfire causes until about halfway through the year, they don’t have the specific numbers for coal seam-caused wildfires.
“Given the ongoing drought and warm temperatures throughout the season, it is reasonable to attribute a large portion of our wildfire starts this year to coal seams,” he said.
Echeta Road, north of I-90 in Campbell County, experiences many coal seam fires annually, Burnham said.
He said the issue is also somewhat dynamic because of how hard it can be to track and map the smoldering seams, and the process can be quite costly.
“If they're burning underground, then they [the seam fires] move over time,” Burnham said. “So even if we were to map [the seams], likely if we mapped it this year, in potentially 5 or 10 years, that map might look a little bit different.”
Mapping the burning seams, despite their movement over time, would give firefighters a better gauge for where to be watching for wildfire. Defining the scope of the hazard would be the first step in mitigation, said Burnham.
Last May, Campbell County joined Sheridan and Johnson counties on a FEMA application requesting $750,000 to map these coal seam threats that span over 1.5 million acres of land, according to Burnham. He explained that the Tri-County Coal Seam Fire Mapping Grant would “utilize infrared and thermal mapping to help identify burning coal seams.” He said they haven’t had any update on the status of the funding. They have no alternative funding plans.
“We're hoping that the funds from FEMA come through so that way it can help us define the scope of the coal seams and the risk that's out there right now,” Burnham said.
If they don’t receive the funding, they will have to continue to fight the fires as they have been.
“We just do the best we can with the resources that we have,” said Burnham. “There's a factor of the firefighting that, regardless of the steps and the measures we take, sometimes we're at Mother Nature's mercy a little bit.”
Some coal seams may burn without sparking a wildfire. A BLM public safety notice says the public should refrain from calling 911 about these fires unless they are actively spreading through fuels on the surface.
