I have never heard of this. Heard of the Centralia some 20 years ago when my parents visited up there. But never with all my connection to Cumberland have I heard of underground burning.
Oh, man, just drive the grade up to Frostburg, the colder, the better, and you’ll see the steam coming out of the bedrock in the median. Unless it finally went out or they finally found a way to starve it, there’s a mine burning deep under there. Not as bad as Centralia, but it’s still chugging along. I pointed it out to my wife one year when we were heading to (I think) Penn Alps for Christmas dinner with my family (or, it may have been The Casselman or Savage River Lodge), but it was still percolating. It’s just one of those ‘things’ that is so ubiquitous to the locals, it isn’t even really a subject for discussion. Kind of a boring little factoid. Hey, it’s it’s coal country. It goes with terrain.
I went to Frostburg State College decades ago, and had never heard of an underground mine fire there. Interesting info.