Fire Alarm

Underground Inferno,a short documentary on coal mine fires,premiered on television in February this year after it was commissioned by National Geographic channel from about 3,000 entries by Asian directors in 2005. Earlier this month,at the international short film festival,part of the 40th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Goa,the film went on to win the Vasudha award,the best film award in the environmental film category,along with Meltdown in Tibet by Michael Buckley of Canada.

“One of the most potent causes of global warming is mine fires,and it’s not restricted to a particular part of the globe. It’s as much a menace in America as it is in developing nations like India or China,but there’s scant awareness about it,” says Umesh Aggarwal,the producer (in picture) who has also co-directed it with Sanjeev Sivan.

Way back in 1985,as a young production assistant on duty,Delhi-based Aggarwal had visited Jharia in Jharkhand,one of the largest producers of bituminous coal in India . He came back with memories of a rural community of over five lakh people living precariously even as fire raged in about 65 mines,beyond any possible human attempt at mitigation. Aggarwal says that was his moment of epiphany. “I knew I would be back at Jharia some day to make a film of my own on these mine fires and what it meant to the community and the environment,” says the 43-year-old.

The film,which has been shot in Jharia and Centralia ,a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania in the US ,captures a human story besides explaining the potency of mine fires. “ Centralia is now a ghost town with a population of only about nine. The US government evacuated the entire town in the early 1980s because of the potential danger to its citizens. Unfortunately,it’s difficult to carry out such a thing in Jharia,where the fire has been going on for over a century now. The population is huge and rehabilitation becomes difficult because many of them are migrant labour,” explains Aggarwal,talking of the Jharia Action Plan that is with the Prime Minister’s office for consideration.

Underground Inferno offers an integrative look at the enormity of the problem worldwide and even looks at possible solutions. Aggarwal and Sivan travelled to Germany ,where scientists are working on a satellite device to map the movement of underground fires. “We wanted to travel to China too,which has the most number of mine fires but it was just ahead of the Beijing Olympics,and they did not give us permission to shoot,” says Aggarwal,who had won the National Award in 2007 for the best investigative film for his documentary The Whistle Blowers .