More distressing still, several thousand coal mines have caught fire in Australia, Britain, China, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, and the United States; many have been burning for decades, some for centuries. An infamous example is the Jharia coalfield, in the northeastern Indian state of Jharkand. Covering 170 square miles, Jharia is India’s main reservoir of coking coal, the hard coal used to make steel. It has been on fire, calamitously, since 1916; entire villages have disappeared into the smoking ground.
