How easy would it be to create a Coal seam Gas (CSG)Explosion.?

Question

I am writing a novel. I am trying to find away to create an explosion that can be interpreted as divine intervention. but turns out to just be coincidence. If lighting struck an area where CSG was leaking from the ground how big would the explosion be. Or could something like that not happen

Answer 1

Not likely at all to happen 'naturally'.....To get the gas explosion there would have to be a means of accumulating the gas into a significant enough quantity that it would ignite.

Such events have occurred, even frequently, IN COAL MINES !  The mine provides the cavity toward which the gas would be able to flow and thus accumulate in quantity.

There are and have been "spontaneous" coal bed ignitions in nature without the presence of a mine---- I have personally seen one in New Mexico, they have occurred elswhere also. The part that seems improbable is the explosion.  A lightening strike can and will cause a coal bed to catch fire but that fire is a smoldering one, some of the "blue" mountains in SE USA are a product of the smoke from smoldering coal beds aflame--the rate of burning is rather slow and deliberate on occassion coal mining companies would put such fires out but basically they only wish to do so with beds that are big enough to be worth exploiting via their mines.  Such fires have many causes among which are lightening strikes.

The burned coal seam I observed in the 4 corners area of NM had burned itself out sometime in the Pliocene era--before recorded history of the area.Utah has several such fires at this time--their start is not certain, but they have destroyed important  coal resources.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what setting you're thinking about, but gas explosions are very common in my country (Philippines) and is usually due to careless use of a gas stove.  A few years ago, some government-recruited people started going house-to-house demonstrating the proper use of the stoves to prevent this sort of thing.

My classmate in college told me about a maid they had working in his father's bakery who lit a gas stove the wrong way and singed off her eyebrows, but had very minor burns (like a sunburn almost) from the accident.  My own maid tells stories of her neighbor's houses burning down due to faulty electrical wiring and gas stoves carelessly left on.  Like I said, it happens all too often.  I get the impression that the explosions are not very powerful, but tend to ignite anything else around, and that's the main danger.