Given the industry I’m in--without saying too much, I’ll simply say that it’s a mining-related industry--stories like this one always catch my eye. That it happened down in Colorado Springs just makes it more intriguing to me.

Eight-year-old Matt Bershinski was running through a Rockrimmon park Monday, playing with the garter snake he’d just caught, enjoying a hot summer day in the trees.

But the heat outside was nothing compared to what he stepped into, an 800-degree invisible inferno that caused second-degree burns and melted one of his plastic clogs to his foot.

It turned out to be coal dust left over from Colorado Springs’ mining days, combusted by the heat and sunshine. The bizarre situation initially confounded firefighters, who wondered if it was caused by an underground mine fire. There was no smoke or flames.

That coal dust was left from at least five decades ago (in likelihood, much longer than that). I can’t say that I’m an environmentalist (at least not in the progressive politics sense of the word, although perhaps more so in the Ted Nugent sense of the word), I’m a fan of the kind of legislation that made dumping coal dust a crime. Not all environmental legislation is created equal, of course, but some is well worth supporting. Incidents like this act as a good reminder of that fact.

It’s a shame this kid walked into a hazard left from a very different era. Luckily, it sounds as if he’s going to be just fine, though.

Read the story.

PS - RMBB 7.5 updates coming later today or tonight.