Rio Tinto , Blair Athol in centrel qld.. Blair Athol used to be a underground mine many moons ago, It then had small fires in the coal seams... So now it is open cut (was) you would come across the fires from the old underground fires and once you added some more oxygen to the already hot coal it went up in flames...

Submitted by John - Rio Tinto , Blair Athol in centrel qld.. Blair Athol used to be a underground mine many moons ago, It then had small fires in the coal seams... So now it is open cut (was) you would come across the fires from the old underground fires and once you added some more oxygen to the already hot coal it went up in flames... They often used to use the old P&H 2800 shovel to load it out and into trucks!! We used to use massive sprinklers a lot to cool the heat and flames but was never really that successful, would cool off the heat but a couple of hours later it would heat back up... Amazing stuff ... One of the most interesting places I have worked...