Ranchi, Aug.14: Churi underground coal mines of Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) under its North Karnpura area have been under fire since Friday and so far there is no sign of it coming under control.
Locality sources informed this to CoalNet saying the fire in the highly mechanized mines where continuous miner machines are being used for coal production a year ago has become a matter of concern of the CCL management and work of extinguishing fire is going on war footing.
“Effort is being put on to seal the fire area by using sandbags. Apart from this, pipe connection is being given to supply nitrogen to extinguish fire and measure methane level inside the mines. Senior officials are camping in the area,” a locality resident said.
Another resident supported the fact, saying the intensity of fire is so high that a crack has developed on the surface above the mines in forest and CCL management is attempting to fill it using red moram,” the resident said.
Reason behind the fire could not be ascertained. CCL officials say it was due to contact of oxygen with coal while a section of miners say it was negligence from the part of CCL management supposed to take care of the mines which at present used to give 1500 ton per day and was expected to give 5000 per ton in near future.
“It was a pilot project and an ambitious project but the role of the technical team to run it remained perfunctory at best as no extra precaution was taken for the safety of mine, which was targeted to give production of 5.5 lakh ton in 2020-21. Either intrinsically safe apparatus was not used for mining or management failed to measure methane level in the mines or both,” an insider said.
“Seriousness about the safety of the mines gets revealed from the fact that GM got information regarding fire after more than 12 hours when fire broke out of 57 th level,” the insider added.
Contacted the director (technical) of CCL, Virendra Kumar Srivastava, for his comment he refused to talk on the matter saying the system did not permit him to do so.
“We have a public relation department for the work. I can give any reply to you only through them or only after face to face meeting as the matter is highly technical,” Srivastava said when contacted to know the reason. Mobile phone of concerned general manager, Sanjay Kumar, was found switched off.
The mine was established after an investment of ₹ 400 crore.
