Centralia Mine Fire

The pit had been dug around 1935 and left open, about 75 feet wide and 50 feet deep, just outside the borough line on the eastern edge of the Odd Fellows Cemetery. By 1962, most of the coal worth mining under Centralia was gone. About 1,100 people lived above what was left: tunnels, pillars, and 10 named coal beds.

How it started

Pennsylvania's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation gives the most widely accepted account. In that account, borough personnel set the trash alight on purpose, to cut its volume, its smell, and its pests before Memorial Day visitors came to the cemetery. The state believes the pit had no proper barrier of noncombustible shale, so the fire spread from the trash to coal waste and then into the old mine workings. David DeKok, the author of two books on the fire, says five members of Centralia's volunteer fire company set the dump alight, let it burn, and hosed it down.

The same state bureau still lists other theories: a mine explosion in the 1930s, trash that caught fire on its own, and vandalism. No one has ever been held liable for the fire.

Trying to put it out

The first attempts were water and a clay blanket. Later projects dug out burning ground, cut isolation trenches, and pumped sand, fly ash, and crushed rock into the workings through boreholes. The state's chronology records $3.3 million spent between 1962 and 1978 "with limited results." More than 2,000 boreholes have been drilled into the fire area since 1966, and readings above 1,000°F were common in the 1970s and 1980s. The highest was about 1,350°F.

On February 14, 1981, the ground opened under 12-year-old Todd Domboski in his grandmother's yard. His cousin, Eric Wolfgang, pulled him out. A few hours later, an Associated Press photograph showed the boy looking over a barricade at the hole.

The buyout

In 1983, a study for the federal Office of Surface Mining put the cost of putting out the fire at $663 million. In December 1983, Congress appropriated $42 million to buy out and relocate residents, and the buyouts began in 1984. Between 1985 and 1991, 545 homes and businesses were bought and their occupants moved. The state demolished the buildings it bought, but it did not buy the vacant lots or the coal. Families in Byrnesville and Germantown, two villages nearby, were moved as well.

In 1993, the state closed about 4,000 feet of Route 61, where the fire had consumed or weakened the coal pillars holding up the road.

The holdouts

In January 1992, the state began condemning the last 53 properties. Owners objected, and the borough, which claims the coal under its streets, sued over what it called a de facto taking of that coal. The county court ruled against both. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against the property owners in September 1995 and against the borough that December.

The holdouts stayed, and for years the state let them. When it moved to remove them, four owners and the borough told Commonwealth Court in March 2010 that the condemnation was a "massive fraud" driven by "hundreds of millions of dollars of some of the best anthracite coal in the world." Steve Fishman, the lawyer for the state's Department of Community and Economic Development, dismissed the claims as "conspiracy theories" and said he knew of no document giving the borough the coal. The state's mine bureau calls press reports of 42 million or 84 million tons left under the borough "very unlikely," and it estimates that about 25 million tons were there before any mining began.

The residents also pointed to state data showing underground temperatures had fallen, and to a 2008 study that found the outdoor air met clean-air standards. The state answered that the fire had likely followed the seam deeper, and that gas could still collect in houses above it.

A federal suit followed in October 2010, arguing the state had treated the holdouts unequally by letting one other family keep its property. Judge Christopher Conner refused to halt the condemnation in March 2011. In October 2013, eight residents settled. They may stay in their homes for as long as they live, and the state paid $349,500, including $218,000 for the value of the houses. The state says it sought the houses for public safety and denies any plot over the coal. "They bent us, but they didn't break us," said Tom Hynoski, one of the eight.

Silent Hill

Christophe Gans, who directed the 2006 film Silent Hill, said in April 2006 that the screenwriter Roger Avary had sent him a link about Centralia, and that the production used what happened to the town to build the film's mythology. In the film, coal fires emptied Silent Hill. Gans said the crew called the film "Centralia" during shooting, to keep photographs of its creatures off the internet.

The 1999 video game is a different matter. Keiichiro Toyama, who created it, said that year that the team "deliberately did not use an actual place." Masahiro Ito, its art director, wrote in 2019 that no real town inspired its design.

The fire now

By January 2012, the fire had spread beyond the borough line and involved about 400 surface acres, moving on average 50 to 75 feet a year. Ground that has burned out can still vent gas and collapse. As of 2012, the state had no plan for the fire or for the ground above it.

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection warns that dangerous gases are present over the fire and that the ground can collapse without warning, and it strongly discourages visits to the immediate area. There is no visitor center, parking lot, or restroom. Visitors park on the road shoulders in the old street grid and walk the paved streets, where curbs, steps, and fire hydrants front empty lots.

Steam from the ground is most often reported on cold, damp mornings between October and April, and it can be hard to see on a warm afternoon. The state notes that burned-out ground can still vent gas and subside, so the cracks are best looked at from the road.

The Graffiti Highway, the abandoned stretch of Route 61 south of town, was buried under about 9,000 tons of clay in April 2020 at the landowner's order and is posted against trespassing. The houses still standing are lived in and private.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church, on the hill along North Paxton Street, celebrates Divine Liturgy on Sundays at 10:30am. The cemeteries around the town are still in use.