Practice of Fighting Fire and Suppressing Explosion for a Super-Large and Highly Gassy Mine

The Baijigou Mine fire in Ningxia Province,which broke out on October 24,2003,affected more than 10^8 m^3 of the mine and was probably the largest underground fire in China in recent years. In addition to its size,the fire was also characterized by excessive air leakage and the potential for violent methane explosions. A series of new measures were taken to fight the fire,including sealing intake tunnels with water,injecting three-phase foam through boreholes,and flushing with a large volume of nitrogen. The fire was successfully extinguished and production re-sumed soon afterwards; not one single methane explosion occurred during fire-fighting and afterwards.