Will the Fires That Made Centralia a Ghost Town Ever Go Out?

Coal fires have burned beneath this Pennsylvania town for decades, driving away inhabitants with continual smoke, ash, and cave-ins. Learn how coal-seam fires work in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Vogel bam here. The smallest municipality in Pennsylvania
is Centralia, a former mining community located about two hours
northwest of Philadelphia. Records tell us it had one thousand,
four hundred and thirty five residents in the year nineteen sixty. Today,

(00:24):
fewer than ten people still live there. The US Postal
Service revoked Centralia's zip code in two thousand two, and
the local portion of State Route sixty one was permanently
closed off nine years before that. We can't blame the
area's decline on the usual socioeconomics suspects. Its problems run deeper, literally,

(00:45):
since at least nineteen sixty two, a coal seam fire
has been smoldering right below the town. Yes, in Centralia,
the earth has been smoking and ash has been raining
down for over fifty years. No one knows exactly how
the coal fire got started, but whatever set the thing off,
this long lived blaze isn't some kind of one off fluke.

(01:09):
Naturally occurring coal deposits are called seams in the mining industry,
and wherever such veins occur, whole seam fires like the
one under Centralia may break out and commonly do. China's
three thousand mile or five thousand kilometer coal mining belt
is notorious for its seam fires. So is a town
in India where fires have claimed about forty one million

(01:31):
tons of coal since nineteen eighteen. We spoke via email
with a Newtma Prakash, a geologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
She said the issue is more prevalent in areas where
coal was extracted in the past with limited efforts to
ensure that the whole left from the extraction was filled up.
She explained that minds that don't provide structural support to

(01:53):
keep ground from collapsing likewise risk seam fire outbreaks. Granted,
humans aren't always responsible though. Down in New South Wales, Australia,
there's a famous coal seam that's been burning for six
thousand years straight. Scientists think it was first ignited by
an ancient brush fire or lightning strike. The coal doesn't

(02:14):
need much encouragement to catch fire. Under the right circumstances,
the material can actually light itself ablaze through spontaneous combustion.
We also spoke via email with research geologist Alan Colker
He explained the decomposition of pyrite present in coal produces heat,
and in some cases this self heating can start the

(02:35):
coal on fire. This is a problem even where coal
is transported long distances and ships. By most accounts, Centralia's
Great Fire began at a dump near the local Odd
Fellows Cemetery on nineteen sixty two. This landfill was intentionally
set ablaze with six volunteer firefighters standing by. It was

(02:55):
all part of a yearly clean up effort by the
local government. Controlled ns were popular garbage disposal technique back then,
but things didn't always go according to plan. Perhaps this
fire ran deeper into the trash than anybody realized. If so,
it could have spread through the refuse and entered the
nearest coal mine pit with no one being the wiser.

(03:17):
Then again, maybe the town government had nothing to do
with it. Some have argued that a different garbage fire
at the same site, a lit by an unidentified truck driver,
is what really sealed Centralia's fate. Another less popular theory
claims that the coal seam fire started all the way
back in the Great Depression and went unextinguished for decades
before the nineteen sixties gave it a new lease on life. Regardless,

(03:41):
the inferno made itself right at home, sweeping through mine
tunnels and coal seams. Flames descended as far as three
hundred feet that's ninety below the ground, sometimes nearing temperatures
of one thousand, three hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit or
seven thirty celsius. According to an investigation, in passageways underlying

(04:01):
some four hundred acres or a hundred and sixty hectares
of land had been touched by the blaze at some
time or other. Kolker said uncontrolled coal fires have all
the potential environmental impacts of burning coal for power generation,
with none of the benefits. In addition to emitting carbon dioxide,
trace metals such as mercury and harmful fine particles are omitted.

(04:24):
Per Cash noted that methane and sulfur dioxide are also
common and so distinctive that just talking about these fires
virtually floods her with memories of the scent. To this day,
smoke rises from the earth through fissures around Centralia. Meanwhile,
the terrain has become perilously unstable over time. Percash said

(04:45):
these fires are dangerous as land can suddenly collapse or
sink as the fire just eats up the ground underneath.
Such collapses can damage houses, roads, train tracks, et cetera.
That's why Pennsylvania closed off four thousand feet or about
one thousand, two hundred meters of root sixty one back in.
Subterranean pillars that held up the pavement were destroyed or

(05:07):
weakened by the flames, making the roadway totally unsuitable for motorists.
So will Centralia's fire ever burn out. Extinguishing efforts so
far haven't paid off. Between nineteen sixty two and nineteen
eighty two, assorted government agencies spent seven million dollars fighting
the Centralia coal fire. Openings were sealed, trenches were dug,

(05:30):
and the mines were stuffed with non combustible ashes, sands
and crushed rocks, but nothing worked. Nearly all of Centralia's
former residents are long gone. Many took advantage of a
forty two million dollar taxpayer funded relocation initiative, which saw
five hundred buildings destroyed. The final holdouts have been granted
permission to spend the rest of their lives in the town,

(05:53):
as per settlement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to
the state's Department of Environmental Protection, the fire might keep
on raging for over a hundred years yet to come.
But as bad as they can get, coal seam fires
aren't invincible, Prakash said. Good policies on mining safety and
reclamation go a long way as preventative measure. If a

(06:15):
fire does start, taking quick action to contain it by
isolating the fire, dousing the fire, cooling the area, and
continued monitoring to ensure that the fire does not start
again are important measures. Centralia's hellish effect made it part
of the inspiration for the two thousand six horror film
Silent Hill, the departure from the video game series that
it was adapted from, and over the past thirty odd years,

(06:38):
the town Centralia, not Silent Hill, has become an unlikely
tourist destination. One former attraction was the abandoned stretch of
Root sixty one. Dubbed the Graffiti Highway. It attracted masses
of street artists who added a rainbow of cartoons and
signatures to the pavement. However, in twenty twenty, the corporation

(06:59):
that the undrivable road had it covered up with piles
of dirt, to dissuade visitors from swinging by during the
COVID nineteen pandemic. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini
and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and
lots of other burning topics, visit how stuff works dot com.

(07:19):
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