Most underground coal fires (country)
Who
China
What
100+ total number
Where
China ()
When
2013

China, the world’s largest producer of coal, currently has hundreds of fires underground across its 5,000-km-wide coal belt. It has been estimated in studies since 2002 that around 20 million tonnes of coal per year are destroyed and lost and around 10 times that amount are made inaccessible owing to the fires.

In 2007, China announced that it had extinguished an underground coal fire that had consumed more than 12 million tonnes of coal over more than 50 years of burning. All major coal producing countries suffer from underground coal fires.