Petrila is a town in the
Jiu ValleyThe Jiu Valley is a region in southwestern Romania, in Hunedoara county, situated in a valley of the Jiu River between the Retezat Mountains and the Parâng Mountains...
,
Hunedoara CountyHunedoara is a county of Romania, in Transylvania, with its capital city at Deva.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 485,712 and the population density was 69/km².*Romanians - 92%*Hungarians - 5%*Romas - 2%*Germans under 1%....
,
RomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. It is located near the junction of the East
JiuJiu is a river of southern Romania. It is formed near Petroşani by the junction of headwaters Jiul de Vest and Jiul de Est.It flows southward through the Romanian counties Hunedoara, Gorj and Dolj before flowing into the Danube a few kilometers upstream from the Bulgarian city of Oryahovo, 331...
with
TaiaThe Taia River is a tributary of the Jiul de Est River in Romania.-References:* Administraţia Naţională Apelor Române - Cadastrul Apelor - Bucureşti* Institutul de Meteorologie şi Hidrologie - Râurile României - Bucureşti 1972]...
and Jieţ Creeks.
The town administers four villages: Cimpa, Jieţ, Răscoala and Tirici.
History
A Romanian town in the
Carpathian MountainsThe Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
, Petrila is an ancient settlement, but its existence was not documented until 1493 in a donation letter between Vladislav the First, King of Hungary and a Romanian prince named Mihai Cande.
The name of the town was noted in 1733 as coming from the Latin word “petrinus” ("pietros" in Romanian), which can be translated into English to mean “of stone”, a reference to the large
coalCoal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
deposits in the area that would become a profitable export in the
Industrial RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
. The exploitation of coal deposits in and around Petrila made the town grow as a single-industry town, revolving either around the mining of coal or the processing of the coal mined there, which is listed under the grade “Pitcoal”
http://www.avj.ro/node/196094/geninfo. Mining operations began in 1840, but the town would remain sparsely populated until the arrival of Moldovian workers forced to relocate by the former president of Romania
Nicolae CeauşescuNicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
under Communist rule. The restructuring of the economy since 1989 has led to a decrease in production and supply for the region, including Petrila
http://www.avj.ro/node/196094/economy.
It was the site in recent times of the Petrila Mine disaster, wherein two methane gas explosions in a coal mine on November 15, 2008 killed at least 12 miners and/or rescue workers. This is not the first time this millennium a coal mine in Petrila has suffered such an incident; another similar incident occurred in 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7731814.stm.
Economy
The mining in the town began in 1840 and the peak production of coal was in 1984 1.255.240 tonnes, since then it decreased to 504.000 tonnes.
External links