from the back kitchen window of his little house on a ridge in east central pennsylvania john
lotkins looks out at the most unusual prospect just uphill at the edge of the local cemetery the
earth is ablaze vegetation has been obliterated along the quarter mile strip sulfurous streams of
smoke billow out of hundreds of holes in the mud there are pits extending perhaps 20 feet down in
their depths discarded plastic bottles and tires have melted dead trees with their trunks bleached
white lie entangled heaps their stumps now venting smoke through the hollowed centers this hellish
landscape is all that remains of a once thriving town in pennsylvania welcome to its history i'm
your host ryan socash and today we explore the history of america's burning ghost town
coal mining began in pennsylvania in the mid 1700s at cole hill present-day mount washington just
outside of pittsburgh where the coal was extracted from outcrops along the hillside and transported
by canoe to the nearby military garrison at fort pitt by 1830 the city of pittsburgh known then as
smoke city consumed more than 400 tons of coal per day and as this might sound impressive on a
local scale the mining that would ensue over the coming centuries to serve a more national demand
was far more significant during the past 200 years over 10 billion tons of coal has been mined in 21
pennsylvania counties equaling approximately one-fourth of all the coal ever mined in the
united states one prevalent industry mining center was centralia pennsylvania located on top of one
of the world's largest coal deposits population grew as the mining industry notoriously attracted
immigrants from europe centralia was no exclusion during the 1860s the town was even home to members
of the mali maguires a secret society from ireland that made its way to america coal mines along with
the irish immigrants in the late 1860s the mali maguires are suspected of having committed a
crime wave in centralia from the murder of the town's founder alexander ray to the death of the
area's first priest some believe that the malis were guilty while others claimed that they were
framed by owners of the mind who feared that they would organize the workers into unions
however after a brutal attempt to subdue the malis and the execution of some of the group
suspected leaders in 1877 the crimes were ended in many ways centralia was a typical mining town
but by the mid 1900s when demand for coal dropped and many of pennsylvania's mines were abandoned
centralia faced a far more dramatic fate when the mine under the town was set ablaze who
or how the fire was started as a matter of debate but most people agree on the following narrative
on may the 7th 1962 the centralia council met to discuss approaching memorial day and how the town
would go about cleaning up their landfill which was introduced earlier that year the 300 foot wide
75 foot long pit was made up of a 50-foot deep strip mine that had been cleared in 1935
and came very close to the northeast corner of old fellas cemetery at the time there were eight
illegal dumps in centralia and the council's intention of creating a landfill was to stop
the illegal dumping trustees at the cemetery were opposed to the landfill's proximity to
the cemetery but recognized the illegal dumping elsewhere had become a serious problem of the
town and hoped that the new pit would resolve it pennsylvania had passed a precautionary law back
in 1956 to regulate landfill use in strip mines as landfills were known causes of mine fires in this
case concerns that the landfill cut through older mines underneath prompted authorities to require
a filling with an incombustible material however as the town fell behind schedule
the fireproof barrier was incomplete and this was a critical error that would lead to the demise of
centralia the fire probably started in may 1962 when local waste management workers began burning
trash at the site of an old mine entrance just outside of town igniting the underlying
coal via an on-scene opening in the trash pit consequently the fire penetrated a primary vein
of coal creating an inexhaustible subterranean inferno this is the widely accepted hypothesis
on how the fire started but there are other theories one of which is called the blast theory
according to local legend a blast fire set off by explosion in 1932 was never fully extinguished
however one man who claimed he operated a bootleg mine with his brother in the vicinity
of the landfill between 1960 and 1962 pointed out that if the 32 fire had never been extinguished
he and his brother would have surely been killed by the gases centralia councilman joseph tai had
a different take he theorized that the centralia coal fire was actually started by an adjacent
coal steam fire that had been burning west of the town and finally there are claims that spontaneous
combustion started the fire around june the 25th 1962 during a period of unusually hot weather
regardless of what theory you adhere to one fact is undisputable dangerous gases had become the
town's newest occupant and the fight began over 20 years firefighters attempted eight times to
put the fire out first they dug trenches but the fire outpaced them then they attempted flushing
a process that involves inserting hulls into or ahead of a fire and then pouring down wet sand
gravel slurries of cement and fly ash to cut off oxygen generally speaking flushing nearly always
fails because of the difficulty of filling every pore space besides because coal fires can exceed
1 000 degrees fahrenheit most fill material burns away leaving more gaps for both of these reasons
the flushing attempt did not succeed next state and federal geologists drilled hundreds
of exploratory boreholes to define the fire then a huge trench was dug across its supposed path
but it was too late the fire had already spread beyond the trench some critics even believe that
the digging actually helped ventilate the fire flooding the area with water was flat out rejected
it is nearly impossible to inundate a large underground area especially one as complex and
well drained as centralia in any case water would have had to be pumped in for years to dissipate
the fire's heat a final solution to dig a pit three-quarters of a mile long and as deep as a
story building would have cost 660 million dollars an amount higher than the sum total of centralia's
entire combined property value so that too was rejected the reaction of the locals was
interesting when the fire first reached the town's edge it was met with a zest of curiosity resident
kathy godinski recalls harvesting tomatoes at christmas from her naturally heated garden
and some residents took pleasure in the fact that they no longer needed to shovel snow in the winter
but the fun and games ended fast when residents began passing out in their own homes from the
carbon monoxide leaking in through their basements and just when the alarm bells started ringing
three additional very significant events took place altering the trajectory of centralia forever
underground gas tanks at coddington's esso gas station exploded due to underground heat route 61
the main road into town dropped eight feet and steam poured out of cracks in the pavement then
dramatically in 1982 a 12 year old boy named todd dembowski was crossing through a backyard when an
80-foot sinkhole opened up and his mother from the window witnessed him vanish into a cloud of gas
the boy only evaded death by clinging onto tree roots until his cousin could pull him out
after that just about everyone in centralia accepted the most radical solution of all
letting the mine burn the u.s government ordered a total evacuation of the town in a
relatively short period most residents accepted a federal buyout and moved to neighboring areas
more than 600 buildings were demolished yet some people fought to stay behind preferring to live
in noxious gas than to leave the only place they had ever considered home in 1992 the governor put
the entire town under eminent domain and in 2001 the state took away the zip code
2009 saw the governor announced that holdouts would be evacuated for their own good but he
underestimated the passion for which the final residents had for their dying town and in 2013
after 20 years of legal battles the remaining 10 residents were allowed to stay in their homes for
the rest of their natural lives but once they were gone their homes would go to the public
domain when residents speak about life in the ghost town today it sounds eerie probably the
scariest thing about living in centralia after the fire are the sinkholes you need to watch
your step especially in the woods because the ground could give way in any moment according
to one resident every once in a while you'll come across a deer sticking out vertically with smoke
billing out through its mouth and although they look as if they were crawling out the poor deer
had fallen into a sinkhole and had either starved to death or suffocated to death from the fumes
there was also an instance of an untimely passing of a resident's cat as recalled by a former
resident known as becky we were swinging in the backyard and this patch of grass suddenly turned
brown their cat was standing there and suddenly it became brown it didn't make any noise and we
thought she had done something to make it all suddenly brown like flipping a sheet over but
it was just another hole and the cat went down i didn't say anything until we jumped over the fence
to see that it was another sinkhole and we called out for our neighbor but after some light digging
her cat was gone today centralia exists only as an eerie grit of streets its driveways disappear
into vacant lots and because the town has no zip code its final residents can't receive mail even
something as trivial as pizza delivery is next to impossible when you don't have a zip code probably
the largest state acknowledgement of this as a residential space is the 4 000 budget allotted
to cover maintenance costs including the clearance of snow one example of the town's spirit in spite
of these setbacks happens at christmas when a few former residents return to set up a manger scene
perhaps one upside is that since no one owns property no one pays property tax the ghost
town has become wildly popular after appearing as the inspiration for silent hill drawing thousands
of tourists but unfortunately tourism mostly benefited neighboring towns since the state won't
issue new business permits in centralia the places selling souvenirs gasoline and lodgings are all
outside of centralia's former borders since the tourists don't bring money into the town
residents have come to despise them asserting that they'll walk on lawns or property freely thinking
it's abandoned they'll always be asking why do you live here they'll dump trash everywhere then worst
of all are the tourists who leave graffiti for those seeking to experience this unique history
firsthand not much actually remains and the area is still considered to be very dangerous
until recently route 61 dubbed graffiti highway was a popular tourist attraction for visitors but
as a result of accidents and unruly activities the state has buried it for good and police forbade
anyone from visiting the cemetery is still active and new burials of former residents occasionally
take place the assumption of the blessed virgin mary ukrainian catholic church still
gives occasional masses the municipal building still stands although the name centralia has been
removed and obviously occasional fragments of foundation sidewalks road curbs do indeed stand
out just enough for one to understand that centralia was once a place called home by many
in 2014 current and former residents opened a time capsule from 1966 although badly damaged the
capsule contained books photos and documents one former resident said that it held great meaning
to those centralians still alive these moments of sentimentality are few and far between with
the fire burning and generations fading it's only a matter of time until all that's left of
centralia is ash having had the personal pleasure of visiting the ghost town some years back when
filming for my channel called america i'd actually make the case that in comparison to the countless
other post-industrial poverty stricken towns that i saw along the road centralia's memory has been
enshrined in mystique and legend a reputation that will most probably go on long after the fire
goes out a reputation as america's most famous burning ghost town thanks for watching its history
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