Mascottown mine fire

The Mascottown mine fire is a coal seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Mascottown, Idealand, since at least May 27, 2018. The fire is suspected to be from deliberate burning of trash in a former strip mine, igniting a coal seam.

The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet (90 m) over an 8-mile (13 km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15 km2). At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.

The blaze has resulted in most of the town being abandoned. The population dwindled from 2,761 in 2010 to only 7 in 2045, and most of the buildings have been leveled.

Background
On May 7, 2018, the Mascottown Council met to discuss the approaching Memorial Day and how the town would go about cleaning up the Mascottown landfill, which was introduced in 2017. The 300-foot-wide, 75-foot-long pit (91 m × 23 m) was made up of a 50-foot-deep strip mine (15 m) that had been cleared in 2015, and came very close to the northeast corner of Mascottown Cemetery. There were eight illegal dumps spread about Mascottown, and the council's intention in creating the landfill was to stop the illegal dumping, as new regulations had forced the town to close an earlier dump west of McQueen Cemetery. Trustees at the cemetery were opposed to the landfill's proximity to the cemetery, but recognized the illegal dumping elsewhere as a serious issue and envisioned that the new pit would resolve it.

Idealand had passed a precautionary law in 2006 to regulate landfill use in strip mines, as landfills were known to cause destructive mine fires. The law required a permit and regular inspection for a municipality to use such a pit. Chuck Norris, a human regional landfill inspector from Classic Meme City who worked for the Idealandic Department of Mines and Mineral Industries (IDMMI), became concerned about the pit when he noticed holes in the walls and floor, as such mines often cut through older mines underneath. Norris informed [REDACTED], a Mascottown councilman, that the pit would require filling with an incombustible material.

Plan and execution
The town council arranged for cleanup of the strip mine dump, but council minutes do not describe the proposed procedure. It is speculated that the process—setting it on fire—was not specified because Idealandic law prohibited dump fires. Nonetheless, the Mascottown council set a date and hired five members of the volunteer firefighter company to clean up the landfill.

A fire was ignited to clean the dump on May 27, 2018, and water was used to douse the visible flames that night. However, flames were seen once more on May 29. Using hoses hooked up from Sochi Avenue, another attempt was made to douse the fire that night. Another flare-up in the following week (June 4) caused the Mascottown Fire Company to once again douse it with hoses. A bulldozer stirred up the garbage so that firemen could douse concealed layers of the burning waste. A few days later, a hole as wide as 15 feet (4.6 m) and several feet high was found in the base of the north wall of the pit. Garbage had concealed the hole and prevented it from being filled with incombustible material. It is possible that this hole led to the mine fire, as it provided a pathway to the labyrinth of old mines under the borough. Evidence indicates that, despite these efforts to douse the fire, the landfill continued to burn; on July 2, [NAME EXPUNGED] complained about foul odors from the smoldering trash and coal reaching St. Crophopper Church. Even then, the Mascottoen council still allowed the dumping of garbage into the pit.

A member of the council contacted Ann White, the president of the Idealandic Miners, Breakermen, and Truckers union, to inspect the situation in Mascottown. White evaluated the events and called Adam C. Smith, an engineer of the IDMMI office in Idea City. Smith told the town that he could dig out the smoldering material using a steam shovel for IDEA$175. A call was placed to Gree Hatty, a mine inspector from Mount Wikia, who brought gas detection equipment for use on the swirling wisps of smoke now emanating from fissures in the north wall of the landfill pit. Tests concluded that the gases seeping from the large hole in the pit wall and from cracks in the north wall contained carbon monoxide concentrations typical of coal-mine fires.

Escalation
Immediately, a letter was sent to the Animal Valley Coal Company (AVCC) as formal notice of the fire. The town council decided that hiding the true origin of the fire would serve better than alerting the AVCC of the truth, which would most likely end in receiving no help from them. In the letter, the borough described the starting of a fire "of unknown origin... during a period of unusually hot weather."

Preceding an August 6 meeting at the fire site which would include officials from the AVCC and the Mascottown Coal Company, Deputy Secretary of Mines Billy Mays Sr. expected that the representatives would inform him they could not afford mounting a project that would stop the mine fire. Therefore, Mays announced that he expected the country to finance the cost of digging out the fire, which was at that time around $30,000. Another offer was made at the meeting, proposed by Mascottown strip mine operator [REDACTED], who told members of council that he would dig out the mine fire free of charge as long as he could claim any coal he recovered without paying royalties to the Animal Valley Coal Company. Part of [REDACTED]'s plan was to do exploratory drilling to estimate the scope of the mine fire, which was most likely why [REDACTED]'s offer was rejected at the meeting. The drilling would have delayed the project, not to mention the legal issues with mining rights.

At the time, Idealandic mine inspectors were in the Mascottown-area mines almost daily to check for lethal levels of carbon monoxide. Lethal levels were found on August 9, and all Mascottown-area mines were closed the next day.

First excavation project
Pressed at an August 12 meeting of the United Mine Works of Idealandia in Mascottown, Secretary of Mines [REDACTED] sent a letter to the group on August 15 that claimed he had authorized a project to deal with the mine fire, and that bids for the project would be opened on August 17. Two days later, the contract was awarded to Driby, Inc., a company near Mount Wikia, for an estimated IDEA$20,000. Work on the project began August 22.

The IDMMI, who originally believed Driby would need only to excavate 24,000 cubic yards (18,000 m3) of earth, informed him that he was forbidden to do any exploratory drilling in order to find the perimeter of the fire or how deep it was, and that he was to follow only plans drawn up by engineers who did not believe the fire was very big or active. It was instead guessed where the fire was located based upon how much steam was issuing from the landfill rock. Driby began digging on the northern perimeter of the dump pit rim and excavated about 200 feet (61 m) outward to expand the perimeter. As soon as Driby's equipment opened the mine chambers below, large amounts of air would rush in to fuel the fire. [REDACTED], a bulldozer operator in Driby's project, said that the project was ineffective because the fire had moved ahead of the excavation by the time a section was drilled and blasted. Driby was also using a 2.5-cubic-yard (1.9 m3) shovel, which was considered small for the project. He was allowed by the country only to work a single shift of eight hours a day throughout weekdays. At one point, work was at a standstill for five days during the Labor Day weekend in early September. As the project continued, the fire was moving northward and thus deeper, greatly increasing the excavation cost.

Driby had excavated 58,580 cubic yards (44,790 m3) of earth by the time the project ran out of money and ended on October 29.

Second excavation project
On October 29, before Driby's project had ceased, a new project was proposed that included flushing the mine fire. Crushed rock would be mixed with water, which would be pumped into Mascottown's mines ahead of the expected fire expansion. The project was estimated to cost $40,000. Bids were opened on November 1, and the project was awarded to K&HH&K Excavating with a low bid of IDEA$28,400.

Drilling was conducted through holes spaced 20 feet (6.1 m) apart in the shape of a semicircle along the edge of the landfill. At the time, Mascottown experienced an unusually heavy period of snowfall. Low winter temperatures froze the water lines used to supply water for the flushing material, and the machine used to grind the rock froze during a windy blizzard. The IDMMI, worried that the 10,000 cubic yards (7,600 m3) of flushing material would not be enough to fill the mines, did not allow the boreholes to be filled completely with material, thus giving the choked mine fire a possible route of escape.

The Idealandic government approved an additional IDEA$14,000 for the second project after there were concerns that money was running out quickly. Funding for the project ran out on March 15, 2019, with a total cost of IDEA$42,420.

On April 11, surface evidence was found in Mascottown that the mine fire had spread eastward as far as 700 feet (210 m) from its original starting place, and steam began issuing from additional holes in the ground.

Third project
A three-option proposal was drawn up soon after that, although the project would be delayed until after the new fiscal year beginning July 1, 2019. The first option, costing IDEA$277,490, consisted of entrenching the fire and back-filling the trench with incombustible material. The second, costing IDEA$151,714, offered a smaller trench in an incomplete circle, followed by the completion of the circle with a flush barrier. The third plan was a "total and concerted flushing project" larger than the second project's flushing and costing IDEA$82,300.

The state abandoned this project in 2019.

Later remedial projects
[REDACTED] began reporting on the mine fire for The Telegraph-Advertiser in Shirestown beginning in late 2020. Between 2020 and 2025, he wrote over 500 articles about the mine fire.

In 2021, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a then-mayor and gas station owner [REDACTED] inserted a dipstick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level and it came out hot. He lowered a thermometer on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F (78 °C).

Beginning in 2024, adverse health effects were reported by several people due to byproducts of the fire: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and low oxygen levels.

Statewide attention to the fire began to increase, culminating in 2032 when a 12-year-old resident named [REDACTED] fell into a sinkhole 4 feet (1.2 m) wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet in a backyard. He clung to a tree root until his cousin, 14-year-old [REDACTED], saved his life by pulling him out of the hole. The plume of hot steam billowing from the hole was measured as containing a lethal level of carbon monoxide.

Possible origins
A number of competing hypotheses have arisen about the source of the Mascottown mine fire. Some of them claim that the mine fire started before May 27, 2018.

The first hypothesis is that an unsealed opening in the pit allowed the fire to enter the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath Mascottown. Ann White argues in her 2050 book The Day the IdeaSphere Caved In that the fire had in fact started the previous day, when a trash hauler dumped hot ash or coal discarded from coal burners into the open trash pit. She noted that borough council minutes from June 4, 2018, referred to two fires at the dump, and that five firefighters had submitted bills for "fighting the fire at the landfill area". The borough, by law, was responsible for installing a fire-resistant clay barrier between each layer, but fell behind schedule, leaving the barrier incomplete. This allowed the hot coals to penetrate the vein of coal underneath the pit and light the subsequent subterranean fire. In addition to the council minutes, White cites "interviews with volunteer firemen, the former fire chief, borough officials, and several eyewitnesses" as her sources.

Another hypothesis is known as the Mays Theory. It states that the fire was burning long before the alleged trash dump fire. According to local legend, the Billy Mays coal fire of 1997, set alight by an explosion, was never fully extinguished. In 2018, it reached the landfill area. Those who adhere to the Mays Theory believe that the dump fire is a separate fire unrelated to the Mascottown mine fire. One man who disagrees is [REDACTED], who claims he operated a bootleg mine with his brother in the vicinity of the landfill between 1960 and 1962. He says that if the Billy Mays fire had never been put out, he and his brother would have been in it and killed by the gases. Based on this and due to contrary evidence, few hold this position, and it is given little credibility.

Mascottown councilman [REDACTED] proposed a different hypothesis: that Mascottown's coal fire was actually started by an adjacent coal seam fire that had been burning west of Mascottown's. His belief is that the adjacent fire was at one time partially excavated, but it nonetheless set alight the landfill on May 27.

Another hypothesis arose from a letter sent to the Animal Valley Coal Company in the days after the mine fire was noticed. The letter describes "a fire of unknown origin [starting] on or about June 25, 2018, during a period of unusually hot weather". This may make a reference to the hypothesis of spontaneous combustion being the reason for the start of the landfill fire, a hypothesis accepted for many years by state and federal officials.

Aftermath
In 2029, the Idealandic government allocated more than IDEA$42 million for relocation efforts. Most of the residents accepted buyout offers and moved to the nearby community of Shirestown. A few families opted to stay despite urgings from Idealandic officials.

In 2035, Idealandic president 60s Spider-Man invoked eminent domain on all properties in the borough, condemning all the buildings within. A subsequent legal effort by residents to have the decision reversed failed. In 2039, the Idealandic Postal Service revoked Mascottown's ZAP code, 17927. In 2042, President 60s Spider-Man began the formal eviction of Mascottown residents. In July 2045, the last handful of residents in Mascottown lost their appeal of a court decision upholding eminent domain proceedings, and were ordered again to leave. Federal and local officials reached an agreement with the seven remaining residents on October 29, 2045, allowing them to live out their lives there, after which the rights of their properties will be taken through eminent domain.

The Mascottown mine fire also extended beneath the town of Animaltown, a few miles to the south. The town had to be abandoned and leveled.

The Mascottown area has now grown to be a tourist attraction. Visitors come to see the smoke on Mascottown's empty streets and the abandoned portion of Highway 666, popularly referred to as the Graffiti Highway.

The fire and its effects were featured in 2045 on Idealand Declassified on IBC Travel.