The Ever-Burning Town of Centralia

Centralia, a small borough in Pennsylvania was once a prosperous mining community. It wasn’t until an innocent plan to clean up a landfill resulted in the town becoming synonymous with American ghost towns. The practice of reducing the amount of garbage in the local landfill by means of controlled fire was nothing new. The city council hired a group of volunteer firefighters to manage the burn every year, and had no prior problems. Unbeknownst to anyone, the very coal that sustained the town would eventually lead to its destruction.

In previous years, firefighters had lit the landfill on fire, monitored its burn, and extinguished the embers when the fire died down. In 1962 the landfill was moved to an abandoned anthracite coal strip mine. The burn that year was uneventful and the firefighters eventually retired for the day, happy with a job well done. Unknown to everyone, the landfill fire was not completely extinguished. Before it could be detected the fire spread from the garbage to a coal seem exposed by a crack in the rocks. The fire quickly burned fueled by the highly flammable coal and eventually reached the abandoned coalmines under the town.

Once the fire was detected several attempts were made to contain and extinguish it. Workers began to monitor the fire by drilling a series of boreholes. Inadvertently this actually fueled the fire by providing it with a source of oxygen. Later they tried cutting the fire off with trenches and also tried sealing it from oxygen sources with clay. These attempts were all eventually met with failure and the mines beneath the town continued to burn.

Despite the failure, life in Centralia continued on as it had always. Some residents complained of the negative impact of the increased levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the air, a byproduct of the burning coal. Gas monitors were installed around the town and in some homes, but no significant incidents were reported.

In 1979, seventeen years after the fire began, gas station owner and then town mayor John Coddington was checking the level of the stations gas tanks when he made an alarming discovery. After removing the measuring stick from the underground tank, he noticed it felt hot. He then lowered a thermometer into the gas and found it to be an amazing 172° F (78° C). It wasn’t until then that the true impact of the fire became known. Several more attempts were made to contain the fire by flooding the mineshafts with water and physically excavating the burning coal. But like the first attempts, workers were one again faced with failure.

Concern was increased even more when a 4 foot wide and 150 foot deep sink hole was formed by collapsing mineshafts and 12 year old Todd Domboski fell in. If it has not been for his quick acting cousin who pulled him out, Domboski would have been consumed by the escaping fumes and perished.

In 1984, Congress approved a $42 million relocation package to move residents out of the town. The majority of residents moved to the neighboring communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland, however a few stayed behind. In 1992 the state of Pennsylvania claimed eminent domain over all property in the community and subsequently condemned the buildings. All residents were eventually forced out after a failed court battle and in 2002 the US Postal Service revoked the towns zip code, 17927.

These days Centralia is little more than a ghost town filled with sinkholes and abandoned buildings. Aside from the occasional adventure seeker, the town is lifeless. There is enough coal under the city to burn for between 100 and 250 more years, meaning it will be some time before anyone could permanently return.

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