The Town of New Castle is a home rule municipality in Garfield County, Colorado, United States. The population was 4,923 at the 2020 census.
Main Street, looking towards the Grand Hogback
A coal-seam fire is a burning of an outcrop or underground coal seam. Most coal-seam fires exhibit smouldering combustion, particularly underground coal-seam fires, because of limited atmospheric oxygen availability. Coal-seam fire instances on Earth date back several million years. Due to thermal insulation and the avoidance of rain/snow extinguishment by the crust, underground coal-seam fires are the most persistent fires on Earth and can burn for thousands of years, like Burning Mountain in Australia. Coal-seam fires can be ignited by self-heating of low-temperature oxidation, lightning, wildfires and even arson. Coal-seam fires have been slowly shaping the lithosphere and changing atmosphere, but this pace has become faster and more extensive in modern times, triggered by mining.
A coal fire in China
Open-cast mining continues near a fire at Jharia coalfield in India.
Fire at the surface, Xinjiang, 2002
The effect of underground coal fire visible on the surface