Blaze ignites at coal mine in Poland

WARSAW, Poland — A fire engulfed a conveyor belt at Poland’s largest brown coal mine Saturday before it was extinguished, and a linked power plant will have one of its units shut because the fire disrupted coal deliveries.

The midday fire at the Belchatow mine in central Poland covered the area that includes Poland’s largest lignite power plant with huge clouds of black smoke. The fire was the second incident in a week.

A spokesman for Lodz region firefighters, Jedrzej Pawlak, said the conveyor belt was 98 feet high, making access to the flames difficult. No casualties were reported, Pawlak said.

State energy group PGE, which runs the mine and the neighboring power plant, said later that the fire was out but had disrupted lignite deliveries to one of the plant’s 11 units, which will have to be shut down temporarily. PGE said the shutdown would not cause any power shortages.

PGE said on Twitter that the fire was caused by the ignition of brown coal that was being conveyed to the Belchatow plant’s Unit 14 reactor but did not reach it.

Atop European Union court ordered Poland on Friday to immediately halt operations at a lignite mine in Turow, on the Czech and German border, that also belongs to PGE. Officials in the Czech Republic had complained that the mine used up groundwater and affected residents.

Poland’s minister for state assets, Jacek Sasin, declared that Poland did not accept the court’s ruling and would not take any steps that could undermine Poland’s energy security as it phases out black coal.