Centralia: American ghost town that burns coal for over 50 years

The roads to this town are blocked, warning signs are everywhere, and the air smells of smoke and gas. Almost all residents left Centralia, and even the US Postal Service deprived this locality of the index and does not deliver correspondence here. And all because coal has been burning under the city for several decades, no one can put out it.

The history of the town of Centralia, located in the state of Pennsylvania, is in many ways similar to dozens of other settlements whose inhabitants were engaged in coal mining. The city was founded in the middle of the XIX century after the discovery of the deposit of this fossil fuel, and most of its inhabitants worked in mines located both in the town itself and in its environs. Despite the fact that the population of Centralia, even during periods of prosperity, was not much more than 2,000 people, this mining town had everything for a comfortable and quiet life. Several shops, schools worked here, had their own theaters, churches and a railway functioned. But everything changed after one ridiculous incident.

In 1962, coal seams were found on the outskirts of the town. Most tend to blame the firefighters who did the garbage collection at the city dump. The waste storage site was located in an open pit of a used coal mine. Firefighters at the request of the city council set fire to the landfill, and when the bulk of the garbage burned out, they put out the flame. The city authorities had previously resorted to this method of waste disposal, so the fire in the spent mine was not, in their opinion, something dangerous. But this time the situation got out of control: the lower, deeper layers of garbage caught fire, and the fire gradually spread to coal seams located near the surface. According to another version, the city dump caught fire from an abandoned cigarette butt and the firemen were not guilty in this case. Be that as it may, the flame began to gradually spread deep into the earth, drawing more and more new layers of coal into the underground fire.

The measures taken by the city authorities did not lead to positive results. They tried to localize the fire, but the underground fire was not so easy to put out, and in the case of Centralia it was impossible.

A few years later, when the townspeople began to complain about poor health, buildings and even people began to collapse under the ground, and gas station owners covered up their business for fear of an explosion, it became clear that the people of Centralia needed to be relocated. In the mid 80-ies of the last century, most residents left the town, but there were those who wanted to stay.

And for more than 30 years, the city of Centralia can be considered almost uninhabited. Extreme travelers are often here, and the town even became one of the locations of the filming of the popular science film that describes the life of our planet after the disappearance of humanity. Asphalt roads have been destroyed in places, puffs of smoke come out through the roadway, most of the houses have been dismantled and taken out, and only in the building of one of the churches are there still services, apparently for those few people who make up the official population of the town.

According to experts, this uncontrolled underground fire can continue for an unlimited time, until the fuel runs out - coal in the vicinity of Centralia. Experts estimate the ignition area at 1.6 square kilometers, and its depth is difficult to judge. It is noteworthy that in the state of Pennsylvania, rich in coal deposits, there are several more such underground fires, which also can not put out. Unfortunately, in developing countries, such as India and China, the situation with underground fires is much worse: there are dozens of cases of ignition of coal seams that cannot be put out. Everything is complicated by the fact that the relocation of thousands of people requires significant funds, so the inhabitants of smoking villages continue to live in their homes, every day at the risk of suffering from a collapse.