Centralia — Where The Coal Still Burns
Centralia is a town that is specifically infamous to local historians, Silent Hill fans, and most residents of Pennsylvania. The town was the loose inspiration for the 2006 Silent Hill film adaptation along with several literary works.
This is likely from the Anthracite coal that has been burning underneath the town for sixty years, leaving it all but deserted. While this town isn’t paranormal like the film it inspired, it’s a dark look at the extinction of a once-idyllic Pennsylvania community.
The Ignition of Centralia
Centralia exists in a part of Pennsylvania with the highest concentration of Anthracite in the world. Anthracite is a coal that has existed long before us (500 million to 4.5 billion years) and was the primary source of income for the small New England town.
Anthracite is one hell of a mineral. It is the densest coal we have discovered and is valuable in that it can burn hot and patiently without an actual flame.
The beauty of the mineral is in its quality, giving the people of Centralia a worthwhile export. The downside was that once it caught fire, it was difficult to notice and harder to extinguish.
The origin is widely believed to be caused by a trash burn orchestrated by the fire department in 1962 to clean up the local landfill. What they didn’t know at the time (yet we love to blame them in hindsight) was that it would ignite exposed coal.
The coal was in a seam that traveled deep into the endlessly excavated tunnels of Centralia. This was the start of an underground fire that still burns to this day.
The Aftermath
Human arrogance would lead us to believe that we discovered the fire almost immediately and took quick action. The reality of this tragic event was far different, however.
The fire was growing underneath the town like a dark secret. It began to slowly reveal itself in strange, concerning ways. After the trash fire was extinguished they began to notice infrequent fires starting seemingly out of nowhere in and around the small town.
To the fire department’s credit, it wasn’t long before they put it together that the fire had originated from the tunnels underneath the small village. They immediately tried to drown out the tunnels with an unbelievable volume of water. Additionally, they covered the entrances to not allow oxygen in.
Anthracite doesn’t go out quietly, however. The coal that had given the town its economy was quickly showing that what it was marketed for was uncomfortably accurate.
The biggest project planned was to remove a wide area of the surface to expose the fire and finally put it to rest. Unfortunately, the funding dried up, and the plan was never fully executed.
Seventeen years later, in 1979, John Coddington reported that the gas at his gas station was measuring up to 172 degrees Fahrenheit. This was compounded by the fact that the residents were already leaving slowly over the last seventeen years.
There was a fire underneath their homes and the carbon monoxide was so bad that the detectors were largely useless. It didn’t matter which house they were in, they would go off immediately. To remedy this, citizens bought canaries.
If the canary lived, you were safe. If the canary died, well you were probably fucked either way. It’s easy to empathize with people who don’t want to leave their home, house, and everything they know — but Centralia was turning lethal very quickly.
The situation didn’t receive real attention until a 12–year old boy nearly died falling into a sinkhole that was leading straight into a hellfire of 400 to 600-degree coals. He was saved due to another boy seeing his orange hunting hat peaking past the opening.
The kid was safe, though the hole wasn’t the first incident. There were massive cracks forming along the asphalt, trees were dying, and their town was quietly rotting from beneath.
If that wasn’t enough, the exposed hole that nearly took the fortunate kid’s life contained a deadly amount of exposed carbon monoxide. This was the start of a government-assisted mass relocation that started in 1982.
Over 40 million dollars were given to the residents of Centralia to assist with moving. This caused the city to essentially die, though it had received a terminal diagnosis decades prior. By 1993, even the roads going into Centralia were rerouted to avoid the mess completely.
Today Centralia exists as a horrifying example of human error. Kept alive by an unbelievable story and the 3 to 5 people that still stubbornly exist in it. The population is diminishing rapidly, however, and its final Mayor died in 2014.
The Anthracite that exists in Centralia goes back hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs ever came close to walking the earth. It has always existed as some primordial commodity we rarely stop to consider.
So while we hope the fires and people do eventually move on from the small ghost town, Anthracite will always live in Centralia.
