Firestorm

A man dedicated to keeping Boston safe from burning finds himself at the center of a firestorm when his prediction comes true.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The alarm
rang out at two a m. Bostonians, aware of how

(00:26):
fast fires spread through on clothing, grabbed buckets and hurried outside.
Spring hadn't yet arrived as of March twenty seventeen sixty,
and those who hadn't dressed warmly felt the cold. Generally,
when the call went out, people searched the sky for
smoke or flames, trying to get a sense of how

(00:47):
close the danger was to their home or business. This time,
the source was easy to see. A house on Cornhill,
which is now Washington Street had caught fire, and it
had spread before the alarm out. No one knew exactly
how the fire started, maybe an ember from a fireplace
or an unattended candle. Every able bodied man, woman and

(01:11):
child raced to the area buckets in hand. The incentive,
other than a sense of community, was how flammable buildings
were and how easily fires escalated. They formed a brigade
in an attempt to put out the blaze and damp
in nearby buildings in hopes that the flames wouldn't spread further,
but the fire proved too aggressive and was soon out

(01:33):
of control. It traveled both north and south, taking out
every home, stable, and business along the way. Then the
wind shifted, changing the course of the fire with it.
The blaze burned homes on what was once King Street.
The bunch of Grapes tavern burned to ash. Warehouses full

(01:53):
of flammable merchandise became additional fuel. Before long, the fire
raced towards Long Wharf. Both docks and ships and all
the cargo aboard them were in danger. Along the southeastern
front near Water Street, flames lapped at the homes there.
The blaze spread toward the Bitter March in Fort Hill Areas,

(02:14):
burning wildly, It headed towards South Battery and citizens began
to panic. You see, the warehouses in South Battery contained
a large amount of gunpowder. Volunteers raced to remove as
much as they could. They dragged bags and barrels, spilling
powder in their rush. Meanwhile, the fire licked dangerously close.

(02:37):
There just wasn't enough time to remove all the gunpowder.
At the last second, the men fled with their lives
from both the fire and the explosion. People from as
far away as Hampton, New Hampshire, said that heard the
blast for over ten hours. Bostonians battled the flames. By
the time the blaze was under control, a hundred seventy

(03:00):
four homes and a hundred and seventy five businesses had
burned to the ground. More than a thousand people were
left unhoused. Despite the loss, no one died. Considered the
worst fire in the city's history, the damage came to
fifty three thousand, three hundred and thirty four pounds sterling.
That's more than ten million pounds today. The destruction couldn't

(03:22):
have come at a worse time. The French and Indian
War had strapped the city for cash. Charitable contributions poured in,
some from as far away as England. The Massachusetts legislature
gave the city three thousand pounds. New York and Pennsylvania
agreed to send some of their own relief money too,
but it wasn't enough, and while Boston was under British rule,

(03:44):
no support arrived from King George the Third, even after
Bostonians sent a petition. Some say that Boston held a
grudge that lasted into the Revolution. Firefighters urged citizens to
boycott British goods, The city was rebuilt, and life went
on over the next hundred years. The fire became part

(04:05):
of the past. As the saying goes, those who don't
learn from history are destined to repeat it. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Welcome to American Shadows. In eighteen fifty two, Moses Farmer

(04:30):
and William Francis Channing invented a revolutionary device in public safety.
Fire alarm boxes. Boxes on every street corner meant alerting
the public faster and pulling the levers into telegraph with
the boxes location to nearby fire stations. In the past,
people had used wooden rattles, word of mouth, trumpets, and

(04:52):
church bells to send up the alarm. There was a catch, though,
The boxes were locked and only police, firef ters or
other city officials had a key, and that meant any
citizen who noticed a fire still had to track down
someone who could pull the lever. As you might imagine,
this meant a delay in summoning firefighters, defeating much of

(05:14):
the alarms intent. Still, policemen walked the streets at night,
and the city felt safer for it. If one of
them spotted a fire, an alarm box wouldn't be far.
Other advancements had been made as well. A few years
after the boxes were installed, fire pumps, the precursor to
fire engines, had replaced bucket brigades. Horses pulled most fire

(05:36):
pumps or engines. Others were pulled by the strongest men
within the fire companies, but even those pulled by horses
often didn't have riding room for firefighters who would run
alongside the horses, meaning that by the time the men
reached a fire they were worn down already. The addition
of running boards helped carry a few men with the pumps,

(05:57):
but not enough to fight larger fires. Motorized engines didn't
become common until the early nineteen hundreds. Fighting fires became
quicker once the city installed municipal water sources, and more
departments switched to horses to haul the pumps. The invention
of riveted leather hoses designed to fit early fire hydrants,

(06:17):
made fighting blazes easier as well, but the addition of
men and heavy hoses meant more weight for the horses
to pull, and so to prevent the animals fatigued, the
city added more horse companies, that is, fire stations that
included stables. With so many advances Boston had put the
memory of the seventeen sixty blaze behind them. The population

(06:41):
swelled to over a hundred and seventy seven thousand by
eighteen sixty. Buildings that were once two or three stories
tall gave way to eight story wooden A frame structures.
The rooftops were answered style, wooden and rectangular, double sloped
on each side, and those slopes steeply hitched ladders couldn't

(07:02):
reach windows above four stories much less the rooftops. Warehouses
cropped up downtown due to a tax loophole. Any merchandise
stored in attics wasn't taxable. Wooden structures, wooden roofs, warehouses
full of merchandise items crammed into attics and it didn't
stop there. Warehouse owners often carried insurance to offset any loss.

(07:25):
In fact, insurance fraud involving arson wasn't uncommon with such insurance.
Sun business owners didn't care if they were house burned
or not, and Boston's streets were narrow and crooked. The
water infrastructure was ancient, and pipes leaked badly, resulting in
a lack of water pressure even at their best. The

(07:46):
hydrants had never been designed to have enough pressure to
reach beyond a couple of stories where you and I
see a disaster waiting to happen. Most citizens did not most,
but not all. John Stanhope dam Roll had been born
in Boston then lived there his whole life. While he

(08:07):
owned a construction business, he had also devoted his time
to the city, serving as a volunteer fireman. With his
drive and dedication, Damrell rose through the city's ranks. After
becoming an elected official on the Boston Common Council in
eighteen fifty seven, he worked on legislation to improve fire
safety and enhance building codes. His suggestions didn't go over

(08:29):
well with city officials, who insisted that the current safety
precautions were more than enough. In eighteen sixty six, he
was elected as the city's chief engineer. He warned officials
about the issues that would spell a disaster during another
major fire. His warnings again fell on deaf ears had
gone over a hundred years without a major fire. They

(08:52):
didn't see the value and costly upgrades to building codes,
pipe repairs, and installation of newer and more hydrants when
what they had seemed to be working just fine. Undaunted,
Damiel advocated for the creation of a building department and
inspection service. Finally, in eighteen seventy one, Boston passed regulations

(09:13):
for building inspections. Later in that same year, Chicago suffered
their worst fire in history, killing three hundred and turning
three square miles of the city to ash and rubble.
Daniel headed to Chicago to learn more about the fire.
He interviewed officials and firefighters. What he learned was a
wake up call. Like Boston, buildings in Chicago were mostly

(09:37):
constructed of wood. Densely packed areas with buildings in close
proximity had allowed the fire to spread quickly. Hoping to
create fire breaks, officials had used gunpowder to detonate some buildings,
but flying debris and flammable gunpowder only made the fires worse.
When Dameriell returned to Boston, he lobbied to make repairs

(09:59):
to the city's pipes and to add more hydrants. Officials
scoffed what had happened to Chicago surely wouldn't happen to them.
In late October of that year, an equine virus swept
to the northeast. The city's horses became too weakened and
ill to pull the fire pumps to replace them. Dam
Wil hired five hundred men to do the backbreaking work instead.

(10:22):
On November nine, Bostonians spent the day enjoying the mild temperatures.
Winter would come all too soon, and many stayed out
well after the street lamps came on. Dam Will was
sitting in his Beacon Hill home enjoying the RESTful and
quiet evening when the alarms went off around seven pm.
He listened carefully. Five dings, a pause, and then two more,

(10:47):
indicating box number fifty two. Dam Will knew what that meant.
The box sat at the corner near Summer, Lincoln and
Bedford Streets the Warehouse district. There couldn't be a worse
place for a fire to wake out. He threw on
a jacket and shoes and headed towards the scene. He
hadn't gone far when his worst fears were realized. The

(11:08):
night sky was a light with an orange glow. The
entire district was burning. The fire had probably already started
when the only patrolman in the area passed the warehouse
around seven o'clock. Since it started in the basement, there
were no telltale flames or detectable smoke, Having seen nothing

(11:32):
suspicious had moved on to the rest of his beat.
After burning through the contents of the basement, the fire
traveled up the wooden elevator shaft. From their clothing and
other dry goods fueled the flames as it raced through
the other three floors to the cedar roof. Given the
flammability of the merchandise, the fire became intensely hot, but

(11:54):
no one noticed it until the windows blew out from
the heat. By that point, the flames had already jumped
to the neighboring building's rooftops. It took twenty minutes to
find someone with a key to the alarm box, and
it took longer for the fireman to reach the district
since the horses were sidelined. The hired men were strong,

(12:15):
but considerably less so than the horses and a lot slower.
By the time exhausted firefighters arrived forty five minutes later,
the fire had completely consumed the building. To the gathering onlookers,
the granite warehouse resembled a giant furnace. Three of the
fire companies had arrived just before damn Roll. He joined them,

(12:38):
helping to position the heavy leather hose toward the inferno.
He shouted for them to hold the corner. The weak
water pressure from the hose couldn't reach the upper floors,
and the fire continued to rage. A large piece of
granite fell directly on the hose, cutting it in half.
The men set to work with equipment from another engine,
while the flames continued to leap from one building to

(13:00):
the next, setting the roofs ablaze. Within minutes, more firefighters
and civilians arrived to assist. Three more boxes sounded the
alarm in the span of half an hour. The fireman
looked to damn Roll for direction. Also vying for his
attention were city leaders who wanted to plan out a
strategy for not only fighting the fire, but also the

(13:23):
political fallout that would surely follow. Amidst all of this,
a young boy tugged on damroll sleeve, begging for help.
His parents were trapped into building a few doors down.
One glance at the blaze told damn Role that the
boy was now an orphan, and if he couldn't figure
out a way to contain the fire, more people would die.

(13:46):
They needed to establish a perimeter. To do that, he
had to see what direction the fire was heading. He
needed a better viewpoint than standing in the smoke filled street.
Dismissing the officials, damn Rol ran three locks over to
Milk Street, smashed in the tallest building's door with an axe,
and raced upstairs to the rooftop. His heart sank. The

(14:08):
fire had spread in multiple directions. There weren't enough men
or engines, not enough water pressure. He had to choose.
Stables made of wood containing an abundance of hay were
plentiful on the south side. If the fire reached there,
he reasoned, there would be no stopping it. He returned

(14:28):
to the men battling the blaze, pleased that at least
the officials had given up and left him to do
his job. All but a few of Boston's twenty one
fire companies had arrived at the scene. He learned that
fire companies across the river in Cambridge and Charlestown had
also sent every available fireman and engine. Others from as

(14:49):
far away as Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire had also
pledged to help. Some were sending steam driven fire engines
by railroad. Daniel hoped that would be enough. They had
been fortunate to get the help they had most telegraph
offices had either closed for the evening or for the
entire weekend. He gathered a few of the firemen and

(15:10):
formed a plan with what they had. By ten p m.
The fire had spread three additional blocks and three different directions.
An alarm went up from boxes forty eight and one
twenty three. While some citizens had rolled up their sleeves
and tried to help, looters darted in and out of buildings,
often finding themselves in need of subsequent rescue. Those had

(15:34):
lost their homes wandered aimlessly. An ever growing number of onlookers,
over a hundred thousand according to first hand accounts, also
filled the now crowded and narrow streets, adding to the
fire fighter's difficulties. And when damwel thought it couldn't possibly
get much worse, it did. The wind picked up, ushering

(15:55):
the flames farther and faster. The blaze took on a
life of its own, but comming a firestorm, the buildings
that housed the Boston Globe and the Herald both burned
to the ground. Gas lines erupted, popping street lights. Between
the fire and the explosions, the city glowed like a
white hot ember, turning night into day. Sailors off the

(16:18):
coast in Maine reported seeing the fire around eleven pm.
The fire spread to the harbor, setting a schooner a flame.
A tugboat crew acted as a fireboat and managed to
save a few bridges. Those fighting the fire on land
didn't have the same luck. The weak water pressure couldn't
reach the highly flammable rooftops. The fire leapt and danced

(16:40):
from rooftop to rooftop, just out of the fireman's reach.
The strong wind spread dust, debris, and flaming embers over
the city. In South Abington, some twenty miles from Boston,
a local found of slightly burned fifty dollar bill. By midnight,
the fire had consumed five city blocks. Damn Roll and

(17:01):
the firefighters continued holding back the flames as best they could.
By six am, Washington Street was ablaze, with the fire
continuing to spread through the town center. Meanwhile, city officials
had gathered without dam Roll, and by the time the
sun rose that Sunday morning, they had come to a decision.
They summoned dam Roll once more. When he arrived after

(17:24):
a long night of fighting the fire, they filled him
in on their plan. He had heard this tactic before.
It hadn't worked for Chicago. It would be a disaster.
Nothing he said convinced them to change their minds. The
city officials had decided to create a firebreak using gunpowder,
and even worse, they ordered him to do it. Everything

(18:01):
was chaos as businesses burned. More and more shopkeepers arrived
to salvage what they could. Looters ran in after them,
taking whatever the owners couldn't carry. All except for one
Hovey's Department store. With the firing croaching, employees and volunteers
determined to save something ran inside. They grabbed garments and

(18:23):
other cloth goods, using the stores faucet to wet the items.
When the faucets ran dry, they formed a bucket brigade
from outside hydrants to the top floor, soaking anything flammable.
Their goal was to keep the fire at bay until
firefighters arrived. Soaked clothing and rugs hung from the windows.
A few brave employees stayed inside, stamping out small fires outside.

(18:48):
Cheers went up as firefighters arrived with hoses, dousing the building.
While Hovey's was saved, others were not. Fires burned with
such intensity that they prevented fire fighters from getting close
enough to do much good. Their efforts seemed futile. All
they could manage to do was slow the fire down.

(19:09):
Those in the historic district watched helplessly as the fire
crept closer. At City Hall, damn World continued to argue
with the other officials. In the end, Postmaster General William
Burt convinced the mayor that gunpowder was their only hope.
Seeing he had no alternative, damn World tried to at

(19:29):
least convince them that they should be selective in which
buildings to detonate, but Bert saw no value in the
city engineer's warnings and remained confident that he should be
allowed to level buildings without approval. With new orders to
use gunpowder as a firebreak, Damrol left eager to in
any case get back to his men and the fire.

(19:50):
His warnings unheard, he followed through with the Mayor's orders,
taking precautions as best he could. First, the gas lines
had to be shut down. After detonating two buildings and
barely escaping with his life, dan Will defied the mayor
and halted the use of gunpowder. It put lives at
risk and only fueled the fire. Bert, on the other hand,

(20:14):
didn't bother shutting off the gas valves. As you might expect,
the combination of fire, gunpowder and gas did more than
level the intended building. Massive fireballs shot into the air,
high enough that residents in New Hampshire saw the flames. Now.
Firefighters were busy putting out additional fires while dealing with

(20:35):
gas leaks and explosions on the corner of Somewhere in Holly,
the reverend and staff at Trinity Church spent hours saving
the church's valuables before the fire made it too dangerous
to re enter. Then they stood and watched the flames
consume everything else. The priceless and rare books were destroyed
when Copley's Library burned to ash, and several publishing houses

(20:59):
were also just droid. The fire was threatening centuries old landmarks.
The Old South Meeting House was one of the last
few colonial buildings still standing. Built in seventy nine, the
meeting Hall had hosted countless church sermons and public meetings.
Some of the most historic events leading to the American
Revolution had happened within its walls. African American poet Phyllis

(21:23):
Wheatley had been one of the many enslaved members of
the hall's Puritan congregation. William Dawes attended covert meetings there
before riding with Paul Revere. A young Benjamin Franklin attended
church sermons the meeting house, and it was there that
Sam Adams planned the Boston Tea Party. Bostonians still met

(21:44):
at the Hall to discuss and debate the city's crucial
concerns and sure the building itself was a mere symbol,
but an important one to many people. With the fire eminent,
the bells in the tower were run one more time
at six am. As the last bell chimed, New Hampshire
firefighters arrived in a steam powered fire engine. After hosing

(22:08):
down a building across the road, they stopped the fire
at Washington Street, saving the historic meeting house. The old
South Meeting House still stands today on State Street. Forty
more New Hampshire firemen in steam fire engines set up
a position ahead of the blaze, posing down buildings to
prevent the flames from spreading. By one pm, the fires

(22:30):
began to dwindle. At two pm, the men put out
the last of them to a cheering crowd. After a
long day, the tired men climbed back onto their steam
fire engines and headed home. Bostonians, feeling the worst was over,
continued to gather downtown to assess the damage. Most of
the buildings there had burned to the ground. The rest

(22:52):
were ruined beyond repair. Almost everything inside them had been
reduced to ash. Owners and on kers picked through the
sooty debris. There was nothing left to do now except
start over. Those who had businesses on the other side
of the fire line felt lucky. While they may have
had some water damage, they were still standing, but not

(23:15):
for long. At ten o'clock that evening, and explosion started
another fire. For reasons unknown, the gas lines still hadn't
been turned off. A building on the corner of Summer
in Washington had the misfortune of being above one of
those gas lines, and it exploded. When another gas line
running under the street went up, it sent a manhole

(23:36):
cover sailing through the air. Other nearby buildings that had
survived the previous night's disaster were leveled or severely damaged.
Firefighters once again raced to fight the fires before they spread.
Around midnight, with the gas lines finally shut down, firefighters
extinguished the last of the flames. Damrol and his crews

(23:59):
continued to oak buildings and streets before officially determining the
blaze was out for good. Dirty tired their eyes and
lungs burning, they finally went home. Damiel returned to his
own house on Beacon Hill, feeling secure that at last
the ordeal was over. But sadly, he couldn't have been

(24:22):
more wrong. The city lay in ruins. What the fire
hadn't destroyed, explosions and water damage had. The flames had
spread over sixty acres, burning seven hundred and sixty seven buildings.

(24:46):
The financial damage was great. In today's money, it would
be well over a billion dollars. The claims people filed
actually bankrupted close to thirty three insurance companies. It had
taken seventeen hours and fironman from twenty seven towns to
stop the siege. Nine firefighters from Boston, Cambridge, Malden and

(25:07):
Wooster died fighting the blaze. Two more died days later
from wounds and burns. Sixteen civilians, including two children, had
also died. The military arrived to keep peace in order.
Some people had lost everything, and with their insurance companies bankrupt,
many took to drinking. Ministers preached on people's sins. In

(25:32):
the aftermath, city officials formed a commission to investigate the
cause of what they now called the Great Boston Fire.
So much of the city's population was now out of
work financially, it was one of the most expensive fires
in history. Rebuilding the city in the harbor would take
time and extensive funding. Everything Dambriel had told them could

(25:55):
happen did, but the commission was torn, admitting that would
be accepting blame for not listening to advanced warning year's worth.
In the end, the commission highlighted exactly what the engineer
had noted, problems with infrastructure, lack of building codes, and
poor construction practices. They blamed the leaky water pipes for

(26:17):
allowing the fire to spin out of control. There was
one person at fault, they said, the city engineer, damn Roll.
The mayor and committee interrogated dam Role repeatedly using any
potentially conflicting words against him. They told the press that
the hero behind the fire had been burnt for his
use of gunpowder. Newspapers quickly retold the story. Fireman rallied

(26:42):
behind dam Roll. They pointed out that the use of
gunpowder had caused more fires, and that surely they knew
more about fires than the Postmaster general. The committee turned
on them to questioning their every decision, their every move
during the blaze. No amount of evidence seemed proof enough
that they or the City engineer had done their jobs properly. Anything,

(27:06):
it seemed, was better than conceding that officials had long
ignored the warnings. In the end, Damrol was dismissed from
his post. It took two years to rebuild the city.
While that let Damil go, they did use his suggestions,
wide and straight streets, more stone buildings, less flammable materials.

(27:28):
The city had more and newer fire hydrants installed, and
Damrell rebuilt as well. He may not have been the
city engineer any longer, but he certainly wasn't going to
stop trying to make Boston safer. In eighteen seventy three,
he founded the National Association of Fire Engineers and now
called the International Association of Fire Chiefs. As the foundation's president,

(27:51):
he published articles on fire safety and building codes. In
eighteen seventy seven, the city appointed him as the new
building commission there, and he served for twenty five years.
Daniel retired in three confident the next building commissioner would
pick up where he left off. That man was Daniel's son.

(28:18):
There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief
sponsor break to hear all about it. It all started
with an attempt to clean up the landfill. The small
town of Centralia had once been a booming coal town

(28:39):
in the mid eighteen hundreds. When it came to power,
coal was king, and the small Pennsylvania town had an
abundance a very dense coal called anthracite. The land purchased
in eighteen forty two by Locust Mountain Coal and Iron,
brought in workers like Alexander Ray. Mining engineer Ray saw

(28:59):
a vision for the down and planned an entire community
from the streets to the home lots. Two years later,
the Mine Run Railroad moved coal out of the valley
to other states. The population continued to grow over the years.
More minds opened and more families moved in. The mines
provided a seemingly endless source of revenue and jobs, and

(29:21):
the town flourished in The town population grew to two thousand,
seven hundred and sixty one, pushing the limits of how
many people could live in the sixty acre stretch of land.
Life was good, though, and the money flowed for nearly
forty years. More. Then coal production slowed and the Great
Depression hit. The town didn't have the same wash of

(29:44):
funds that once enjoyed. In ninety nine, state law allowed
for the Centralia Council to acquire all rights to the
coal beneath the town. A year later, the population had
dwindled to just one thousand, nine hundred and eighty six residents. Still,
the town continued to export a lesser amount of coal
into the nineteen sixties, when most mining companies in the

(30:06):
town closed. Meanwhile, in nineteen sixty two, the officials and
residents agreed something had to be done with the current landfill.
Over the years, local firefighters would do a controlled burn
of a landfill in one location while a new landfill
was started elsewhere. The Centralia Borough Council hired a handful

(30:26):
of the town's firefighters to dispose of the trash. The
current landfill location was an abandoned strip mine pit next
to the cemetery, and like they've done in the past,
the firefighters set the heap on fire, but unlike before,
they let this particular fire burn longer, and some even
debate whether the fire was ever fully extinguished. Though coal

(30:49):
bootleggers insist the fire had been snuffed out or they
wouldn't have been able to continue their work and abandoned
mine shafts. No one had paid attention to the Burrows
law that a fire resistant clay barrier be placed between
each layer and the landfill, the sure that started at
some point but then stopped or forgotten. Complicating the issue

(31:10):
was the fact that the pit hadn't been sealed before
piling on years worth of trash, nor had anyone noted
that the landfill was situated over open areas in the
coal mines. No regulations about that existed then. But even
if legal mining hadn't created chasms underneath the landfill, bootleggers
over the years had been taken coal from the pillars

(31:33):
that held up the mines. The hot and long burning fire,
along with the proximity to an open pit, caused a
collapse into the mine. The flames found extra fuel in
the dense coal the air, and the labyrinth of tunnels
provided the right amount of oxygen. It was the perfect
storm that June firefighters were called to extinguish two separate

(31:57):
fires in the area. Both were put out above ground,
extinguishing the flames below ground proved impossible. Some residents began
to report health issues and moved away. A few houses
suffered foundation issues as the ground beneath them shifted, but
as a whole, much of the community stayed for as
long as the job stick. Then they moved on as well,

(32:20):
leaving the population ever smaller. Seventeen years later, in nineteen
seventy nine, a gas station owner who also happened to
be the mayor, checked the fuel level in his tanks.
When he withdrew the dipstick, he found it too hot
to touch. After lowering a thermometer into the tank, he
discovered the temperature of the gas had reached a hundred

(32:42):
and seventy two degrees fahrenheit. That's almost seventy eight celsius.
Engineers determined that some areas underground may have reached nine
hundred degrees. The people still living in the borough stayed
vigilant about potential fire hazards for three years. Their luck held.
Many convinced to themselves that the fires had burnt themselves out,

(33:03):
or that whatever remained was contained below ground, and that
either way, if the mines were really dangerous, they would
have already caused a bigger problem in the ground beneath
twelve year old Todd Dombowski's feet gave way and a
sinkhole opened up in his backyard four ft wide by

(33:24):
hundred and fifty feet deep. Fortunately for Todd, he had
managed to cling to the edge and his fourteen year
old cousin pulled him to safety. Not only would the
drop have killed him, the steam rising from the sinkhole
contained a lethal amount of carbon monoxide. Despite the evidence,
the community became even more divided on whether the fires

(33:45):
remained a threat. Federal investigators felt differently, and in three
Congress approved of forty two million dollar budget for relocating
the remaining residents. A thousand residents moved, sixty three stayed.
The government had over five hundred businesses and homes demolished
to prevent anyone from occupying them. In In an attempt

(34:08):
to get the remaining residents to leave, the governor invoked
eminent domain for the entire borough and condemned every building.
Perhaps surprisingly, the residents filed a legal action to overturn
the ruling, though that eventually failed. As a further deterrent,
in two thousand two, the post office began refusing to
service the borough's only zip code, But despite the dangers

(34:32):
and diviction notices, seven residents refused to move and filed
another counter suit, though they were allowed to stay in
court orders prevent them from including the property in their
wills or from selling their homes. The mines beneath Centralia
still burn raining ash over the land and will likely

(34:53):
continue to do so for another two hundred and fifty years.
And they aren't the only minds that still aren't in Pennsylvania.
As of this recording. There are thirty eight others. American
Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written

(35:16):
by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by
Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
visit Grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.