The 1962 Fire That Never Stops

There’s a fire that burns in the United States underground, right now, and it has been going for over 50 years. What’s even harder to fathom is that this fire could burn for another 250 years. I’m talking about the Centralia mine fire in Pennsylvania, a disaster that first took place in 1962.

Since that time in ’62, a coal seam in the Centralia mine has been on fire at depths up to 300 feet. The fire is eight miles in length and covers 3,700 acres, all underground. The cause is mostly unknown, but there are several ideas on how it started. The most common explanation is that burning trash ignited a coal seam in a cave, which caused the massive fire.

Back in 1962, the Centralia City Council intended to clean up the town’s landfill that was located in a previously cut strip mine. It had been proposed as a way to stop the problem of illegal dumping, which had sprung up around the area. Ironically, the State of Pennsylvania had passed a law in 1956 that regulated landfills used in strip mines because of the danger of fire from a mine.

An inspector from the state even informed a councilman that the pit would need to be filled with some type of incombustible material when he saw that the landfill had developed holes in the walls and ground. It’s unknown why, but instead of filling the landfill with incombustible material, the council decided to…