Geophysical technologies for detecting underground coal mine voids—An interactive forum

Since 1995, U.S. coal miners have often inadvertently broken into abandoned underground coal mines in the Appalachian coal basin. Unavailable, inaccurate, or incomplete mine maps were typically blamed. However, two recent troubling occurrences have caused the U.S. Congress to authorize the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Department of Labor, to refocus efforts to develop and employ remote-sensing technologies to detect and map abandoned and flooded mine works. These two events were (1) the breakthrough of a tailings impoundment through old mine works in Inez, Kentucky, releasing millions of gallons of mine waste-water and slurry on 11 October 2000, and (2) the breakthrough from a flooded mine works that trapped nine miners for nearly 77 hours at the Quecreek Mine, Pennsylvania, on 24 July 2002. Fortunately, there were no fatalities in these two incidents.