Minichi Contractors was called upon by the DEP to extinguish the Lackawanna County blaze.

It began at the end of December in a refuse pile covering about 7 acres in Simpson, Lackawanna County.

A situation developed because the refuse pile is above two coal seams mined as far back as the 1940s and 1950s.

The smoke and smell from the fire was affecting residents in Simpson, Carbondale and other parts of the county but DEP officials maintained that the air was safe.

During the height of the fire, DEP air quality staff monitored a 1.5mile area near the site for any dangerous levels of hydrogen sulphide. Results showed very low levels.

“The contractor worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week these past few months, sometimes through bitter cold temperatures, to successfully expose and put out the fire,” DEP Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program manager Michael Korb said.

“We are confident the job is complete.”

Extinguishing the fire involved excavating more than 30mof material to get to the source, pouring 590 million litres of water from the Lackawanna River and more than 128,704l of foam on the fire.

The contractor also transferred more than 168,000 cubic metres of coal refuse from the pile to be quenched in a separate area on the site.

DEP’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation personnel have drilled five boreholes at the site to monitor underground heat until the end of the month.

Two of those boreholes were used to locate an underground coal seam to ensure the fire did not ignite the seam.

The cost to extinguish the fire was $2,061,227.