in the Centralia mine in the hard coal region of Columbia County, which has been burning since 1962. Burning Mine, near Summit Hill, caught fire in 1859. In Colorado, coal fires have arisen as a consequence of fluctuations in the groundwater level, which can increase the temperature of the coal up to 300 °C, enough to cause it to spontaneously ignite. The Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana contains some 800 billion tons of brown coal, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804 to 1806) reported fires there. Fires have been a natural occurrence in this area for about three million years and have shaped the landscape. For example, an area about 4,000 square kilometres in size is covered with coal clinker, some of it in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where there is a spectacular view of fiery red coal clinker from Scoria Point. Laurel Run, Pennsylvania New Castle, Colorado Glenwood Springs, Colorado Lotts Creek, Kentucky Ruth Mullins, Kentucky Truman Shephard, Kentucky New Straitsville, Ohio San Toy, Ohio Smoky Mountain in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah Sego, Utah Vanderbilt, Pennsylvania Centralia, Pennsylvania Carbondale, Pennsylvania In popular culture The 1991 film Nothing but Trouble, directed and co-written by Dan Aykroyd, features a town, Valkenvania, that has an underground coal fire that has been burning for decades. The judge of the town references the constantly burning coal-mine fire as the source of his hatred of financiers. In the TV show Scorpion, Season 3, Episode 23, the Scorpion team extinguishes an underground coal fire in Wyoming. See also The Darvaza gas crater, a burning natural gas deposit in Turkmenistan Underground coal gasification Oil well fire Fumarole mineral References Further reading External links The Status of Mine Fire Research in the United States, The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2008) Encyclopedia of Earth: Coal fires Encyclopedia of Earth: Coalfire and remote sensing "Coal fires – A natural or man made hazard?" (site about coal mine fires from Anupma Prakash, of the Univ. of Alaska-Fairbanks) "Fighting Infernos Underground". Popular Mechanics, September 1951, pp. 124–130. "Earth on Fire". Discover. "Seeking Cures in Kentucky Coal Mines". Newsweek. Link to video, UK Looks for Natural Products in Kentucky's Unique Environments Coal mining Energy accidents and incidents Types of fire Environmental impact of the coal industry