Unquenchable fire

A small town in Pennsylvania was lost to a mine fire that's all but impossible to extinguish

photos & story by dan davis

Heat from the underground fires and lack of maintenance have left this Pennsylvania highway in sorry condition. Weeds have a permanent home in the road's cracks, because traffic doesn't pass here anymore.

In the mid-1950s when I was still in elementary school, the road sign on Pennsylvania Route 54 leading into Centralia, Pennsylvania, read: “Welcome to the Borough of Centralia, a Progressive Community.” Today, that sign should read, “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.” The reference to Dante’s Inferno is not accidental, for burning under the streets of what was once a thriving community in the heart of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region is the granddaddy of all underground coal mine fires.

The Centralia coal mine fire is a story that has everything: an urban legend, a conspiracy theory and enough evidence of government incompetence and indifference to shame even the most hard-hearted politician.

Legend has it that around 1870 the pastor of Centralia’s Catholic church ran afoul of “Mollie Maguires” who were active in the area. The priest had denounced the renegade Irish miners and, for his troubles, received a severe beating from several of them. From his pulpit the following Sunday, the priest cursed the town and proclaimed that it would burn forever.

Legends aside, fires in abandoned coal mines are not commonplace. But they do occur and are either extinguished or, at the very least, sufficiently contained so they pose little threat to the residents of the towns and villages in which they are located. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection estimates that more than 1,000 acres throughout the state are burning underground in 250,000 acres of abandoned mines. Fires are currently burning in 45 abandoned mines, including five near communities in Allegheny County, five in Fayette County and one in Westmoreland County. These fires are, for the most part, carefully monitored and contained. This, however, has not been the case with the fire that has been steadily burning under Centralia in Columbia County for the past 40 years. The environmental damage caused by the fire there qualifies Centralia to join Love Canal, Three Mile Island and Times Beach as one of the worst environmental disasters of our time, a fact that finally registered with me when I visited what remained of the community last summer.

I was born and grew up in Mt. Carmel, a town located four miles west of Centralia. My stepfather, a coal miner, was born in Centralia, and his parents lived in a house located only blocks away from where the fire broke out in 1962 in a garbage pit that sat over an exposed coal seam. My family moved from the area in the late 1950s, but over the years I frequently drove through the town when I returned to see relatives in Mt. Carmel. Like visiting a friend with terminal cancer, I just assumed the worst and didn’t linger in the area. I finally gauged the exact extent of the environmental damage when I took the time during my last visit to spend several days hiking through the woods and fields to examine firsthand the effects of the uncontrolled burning.

A sign outside Centralia warns travelers of the dangers below. Tales of people wandering too far into the danger zone and falling into the burning mines are common in this area of Pennsylvania.

The first thing that strikes you when driving into the town from the west on Route 54 is a sense of desolation and emptiness. The houses and stores that lined the streets of the Centralia of my youth are no longer there. Gone is Earl Zeitzloft’s Mobil Station, where my stepfather bought gas and had his car serviced. Farther up the street, where the Methodist church once stood, is a large vacant lot. Turning right on Locust Avenue, the town’s main street, you see that the houses and stores that comprised the town’s business section are all gone, except for several abandoned buildings that will probably be demolished by the next time I drive through town. The American Legion Post is gone, as is Phil Gaughan’s taproom, where I often sipped soft drinks on Saturday nights while my parents socialized. The elementary school on West Park Street is no longer standing, and my step-grandparents’ house, directly across the street from the school, was razed more than a decade ago.

At the far end of Locust Avenue, where the road becomes State Route 61 and leads to Ashland, St. Ignatius Catholic Church and its associated parochial school are missing. The curse was proclaimed in this church. On the lot where the church once stood is a sign that says everything that needs to be said about the fire: “Warning - Danger. Underground Mine Fire. Walking or Driving in This Area Could Result in Serious Injury or Death. Dangerous Gases Are Present. Ground Is Prone to Sudden Collapse.”

Centralia, which was settled in the mid-19th century first by immigrants from Ireland and later by people from Eastern and Southern Europe, had a peak population of about 2,760 in 1890. When the fire broke out in 1962 the population had declined to about 1,100. Today, it is estimated that only 13 people remain. Located in the Western Anthracite Field, Centralia produced anthracite or hard coal, a form of coal with a high carbon content and which burns at a high temperature, leaving little ash. It is estimated that most of the world’s supply of anthracite coal is found in this area of Eastern Pennsylvania. Unlike the bituminous or soft coal found in the western part of Pennsylvania and other locations in the United States, anthracite is found very deep under the surface in strata that twist and bend, making mining difficult and dangerous.

In 1955, during the summer before my freshman year of high school, I spent a week helping my stepfather and his father in their bootleg mining operation in the hills west of the town. Bootlegging was a procedure in which miners dug tunnels or slopes to remove whatever coal still remained in mines that had been owned by large companies but had later been abandoned when large-scale mining proved uneconomical. It was an unsafe operation that usually produced minimal income to the miners. More ominously, bootlegging activity provided a source of air to the coal seams that still remained in the abandoned mines. That week’s experience in 1955 was enough to convince me that there had to be more profitable and safer ways to earn a living.

Anthracite production reached its peak in 1917, with more than 100 million tons of coal having been mined. Production steadily declined after that — 46 million tons in 1950 and 9.2 million tons in 1970. This was due largely to the availability of cheaper fuels such as oil and gas. By the 1960s, full-scale coal mining had largely ceased.

Most authorities agree that the fire began in May 1962 when the Centralia Council asked the town’s volunteer fire department to clean up a town landfill before Memorial Day. Cleaning up meant creating a controlled fire to burn the garbage and refuse that had accumulated in the pit over the past year. The landfill pit, unfortunately, had been excavated almost 30 years earlier in a strip mining operation, and no one was aware that at the bottom of the pit lay a hidden hole that provided access to the miles of abandoned tunnels around and beneath the town — tunnels that still contained large deposits of coal. And thus, the fire began.

The ground is still so hot in some places near Centralia that any added moisture turns into steam. A rainy day or morning dew can produce a scene that most people would only see in movies.

Two months later, after perfunctory attempts to extinguish the fire had failed, a mining engineer in nearby Pottsville offered to excavate the area in the pit where the fire was burning. He wanted $175 to pay for equipment, a sum Centralia Council said would have to be discussed at the Council’s next meeting. The matter never came up, and the fire continued to burn.

Blame for the fire cannot be laid on the doorsteps of the large mining companies that once owned the mineral rights to the land in and surrounding Centralia; they had left the area many years earlier. Interestingly, Centralia was one of the few communities in Pennsylvania to obtain ownership to whatever coal still remained beneath the town. As a result, any assistance for extinguishing or controlling the fire would have to come from county or state resources. Federal government, especially during the Reagan administration, adopted a hands-off policy that left finding a solution to the problem squarely in the laps of the governor and state legislators.

Coal mine fires are controlled or extinguished in several ways. The most successful method is to excavate the area of the fire, digging out and exposing the burning seams of coal. It is also the most expensive. Another method is to inundate the fire, usually with water. This approach, however, requires access to large sources of water. Digging fire barriers or trenches to isolate the fire is a third method. Flushing the mine with non-flammable material through boreholes in the surface is a fourth.

In 1967, exploratory drilling revealed that the fire had spread much farther than originally thought. A drilling and water-flushing operation that year cost more than $40,000 and was unsuccessful. Plans to isolate the entire fire with trenches were abandoned when it was learned the operation would cost $4.5 million to save property in the town valued at $500,000. Finally, it was decided to inject fly ash into boreholes surrounding the fire in order to extinguish the blaze.

Fly ash is a powdery waste product from power plants that burn coal. The fly ash solution became the panacea during the 1970s and 1980s, but in the end it too proved unsuccessful as the fire continued to burn and spread.

The fire continued to spread almost unabated, and in some locations in town, ground surface temperatures as high as 750 degrees Fahrenheit were recorded. Even today, some 41 years after the fire first began, ground temperatures at certain locations quickly turn water into steam. On the day I visited what remained of Centralia, it began to rain, and, in a scene reminiscent of an event from the Old Testament, I found myself enveloped in clouds of noxious smoke and steam.

Environmental damage to the land was not the only problem residents faced as the fire inexorably crept into Centralia. The ground beneath the town was crisscrossed with mine tunnels, and as the fire made its way through this maze a more ominous and dangerous problem developed.

Initially, public health issues were not primary concerns by government officials at all levels when they examined the fire and defined solutions that would not cost too much. In 1969, however, that changed when three families were evacuated from their homes and the buildings demolished when it was found that deadly levels of carbon monoxide were seeping up from their basements. Monitoring equipment was installed in homes located in the impact zone of the fire, and they detected variable amounts of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. No one actually died as a result of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide poisoning, but this possibility now meant that some lasting solution had to be found.

As it became increasingly apparent that the fire could not be controlled, public officials realized that relocating Centralia’s residents was the only viable solution left. Unfortunately, this approach had an unforeseen effect of splitting the townspeople into two factions. One group, composed mostly of older people who had spent their entire lives in the town, wanted government to continue seeking ways to contain the fire. Some in this group were convinced that the fire was a conspiracy by which town officials would sell the coal that remained beneath Centralia at a big profit after everyone had been evacuated. The other group comprised younger people with children who were willing to move and pick up the pieces of their lives living in nearby towns and villages.

Bickering between the two factions became very bitter and contentious, including late-night telephone death threats, slashed tires and fist fights on the streets and in public meetings. In 1983, when it was estimated that $660 million would be needed to extinguish the fire, Congress finally appropriated $42 million for the voluntary purchase and relocation of affected residences and businesses. Between 1985 and 1991, 545 buildings were acquired by government agencies including my step-grandparents’ house and the residents moved. In 1992, eminent domain proceedings were initiated to force the remaining residents to sell their properties and relocate.

Between 1962 and 1978, state and federal governments spent more than $3.3 million to fight the fire, hardly enough to literally or figuratively scratch the surface of the problem. Writing in the Wall Street Journal June 4, 2003, John J. Fialka noted that there was “enough coal to burn for an estimated 250 years . . . What’s left is a fenced-in ruin of vacant buildings, frequently wreathed in steam from rain and stream water seeping down onto the fire.”

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