Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Vogel bam here. The smallest municipality in Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: is Centralia, a former mining community located about two hours
Speaker 1: northwest of Philadelphia. Records tell us it had one thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty five residents in the year nineteen sixty. Today,
Speaker 1: fewer than ten people still live there. The US Postal
Speaker 1: Service revoked Centralia's zip code in two thousand two, and
Speaker 1: the local portion of State Route sixty one was permanently
Speaker 1: closed off nine years before that. We can't blame the
Speaker 1: area's decline on the usual socioeconomics suspects. Its problems run deeper, literally,
Speaker 1: since at least nineteen sixty two, a coal seam fire
Speaker 1: has been smoldering right below the town. Yes, in Centralia,
Speaker 1: the earth has been smoking and ash has been raining
Speaker 1: down for over fifty years. No one knows exactly how
Speaker 1: the coal fire got started, but whatever set the thing off,
Speaker 1: this long lived blaze isn't some kind of one off fluke.
Speaker 1: Naturally occurring coal deposits are called seams in the mining industry,
Speaker 1: and wherever such veins occur, whole seam fires like the
Speaker 1: one under Centralia may break out and commonly do. China's
Speaker 1: three thousand mile or five thousand kilometer coal mining belt
Speaker 1: is notorious for its seam fires. So is a town
Speaker 1: in India where fires have claimed about forty one million
Speaker 1: tons of coal since nineteen eighteen. We spoke via email
Speaker 1: with a Newtma Prakash, a geologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
Speaker 1: She said the issue is more prevalent in areas where
Speaker 1: coal was extracted in the past with limited efforts to
Speaker 1: ensure that the whole left from the extraction was filled up.
Speaker 1: She explained that minds that don't provide structural support to
Speaker 1: keep ground from collapsing likewise risk seam fire outbreaks. Granted,
Speaker 1: humans aren't always responsible though. Down in New South Wales, Australia,
Speaker 1: there's a famous coal seam that's been burning for six
Speaker 1: thousand years straight. Scientists think it was first ignited by
Speaker 1: an ancient brush fire or lightning strike. The coal doesn't
Speaker 1: need much encouragement to catch fire. Under the right circumstances,
Speaker 1: the material can actually light itself ablaze through spontaneous combustion.
Speaker 1: We also spoke via email with research geologist Alan Colker
Speaker 1: He explained the decomposition of pyrite present in coal produces heat,
Speaker 1: and in some cases this self heating can start the
Speaker 1: coal on fire. This is a problem even where coal
Speaker 1: is transported long distances and ships. By most accounts, Centralia's
Speaker 1: Great Fire began at a dump near the local Odd
Speaker 1: Fellows Cemetery on nineteen sixty two. This landfill was intentionally
Speaker 1: set ablaze with six volunteer firefighters standing by. It was
Speaker 1: all part of a yearly clean up effort by the
Speaker 1: local government. Controlled ns were popular garbage disposal technique back then,
Speaker 1: but things didn't always go according to plan. Perhaps this
Speaker 1: fire ran deeper into the trash than anybody realized. If so,
Speaker 1: it could have spread through the refuse and entered the
Speaker 1: nearest coal mine pit with no one being the wiser.
Speaker 1: Then again, maybe the town government had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. Some have argued that a different garbage fire
Speaker 1: at the same site, a lit by an unidentified truck driver,
Speaker 1: is what really sealed Centralia's fate. Another less popular theory
Speaker 1: claims that the coal seam fire started all the way
Speaker 1: back in the Great Depression and went unextinguished for decades
Speaker 1: before the nineteen sixties gave it a new lease on life. Regardless,
Speaker 1: the inferno made itself right at home, sweeping through mine
Speaker 1: tunnels and coal seams. Flames descended as far as three
Speaker 1: hundred feet that's ninety below the ground, sometimes nearing temperatures
Speaker 1: of one thousand, three hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: seven thirty celsius. According to an investigation, in passageways underlying
Speaker 1: some four hundred acres or a hundred and sixty hectares
Speaker 1: of land had been touched by the blaze at some
Speaker 1: time or other. Kolker said uncontrolled coal fires have all
Speaker 1: the potential environmental impacts of burning coal for power generation,
Speaker 1: with none of the benefits. In addition to emitting carbon dioxide,
Speaker 1: trace metals such as mercury and harmful fine particles are omitted.
Speaker 1: Per Cash noted that methane and sulfur dioxide are also
Speaker 1: common and so distinctive that just talking about these fires
Speaker 1: virtually floods her with memories of the scent. To this day,
Speaker 1: smoke rises from the earth through fissures around Centralia. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the terrain has become perilously unstable over time. Percash said
Speaker 1: these fires are dangerous as land can suddenly collapse or
Speaker 1: sink as the fire just eats up the ground underneath.
Speaker 1: Such collapses can damage houses, roads, train tracks, et cetera.
Speaker 1: That's why Pennsylvania closed off four thousand feet or about
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred meters of root sixty one back in.
Speaker 1: Subterranean pillars that held up the pavement were destroyed or
Speaker 1: weakened by the flames, making the roadway totally unsuitable for motorists.
Speaker 1: So will Centralia's fire ever burn out. Extinguishing efforts so
Speaker 1: far haven't paid off. Between nineteen sixty two and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, assorted government agencies spent seven million dollars fighting
Speaker 1: the Centralia coal fire. Openings were sealed, trenches were dug,
Speaker 1: and the mines were stuffed with non combustible ashes, sands
Speaker 1: and crushed rocks, but nothing worked. Nearly all of Centralia's
Speaker 1: former residents are long gone. Many took advantage of a
Speaker 1: forty two million dollar taxpayer funded relocation initiative, which saw
Speaker 1: five hundred buildings destroyed. The final holdouts have been granted
Speaker 1: permission to spend the rest of their lives in the town,
Speaker 1: as per settlement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. According to
Speaker 1: the state's Department of Environmental Protection, the fire might keep
Speaker 1: on raging for over a hundred years yet to come.
Speaker 1: But as bad as they can get, coal seam fires
Speaker 1: aren't invincible, Prakash said. Good policies on mining safety and
Speaker 1: reclamation go a long way as preventative measure. If a
Speaker 1: fire does start, taking quick action to contain it by
Speaker 1: isolating the fire, dousing the fire, cooling the area, and
Speaker 1: continued monitoring to ensure that the fire does not start
Speaker 1: again are important measures. Centralia's hellish effect made it part
Speaker 1: of the inspiration for the two thousand six horror film
Speaker 1: Silent Hill, the departure from the video game series that
Speaker 1: it was adapted from, and over the past thirty odd years,
Speaker 1: the town Centralia, not Silent Hill, has become an unlikely
Speaker 1: tourist destination. One former attraction was the abandoned stretch of
Speaker 1: Root sixty one. Dubbed the Graffiti Highway. It attracted masses
Speaker 1: of street artists who added a rainbow of cartoons and
Speaker 1: signatures to the pavement. However, in twenty twenty, the corporation
Speaker 1: that the undrivable road had it covered up with piles
Speaker 1: of dirt, to dissuade visitors from swinging by during the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other burning topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
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