Centralia, Pennsylvania Was ABANDONED & Left to BURN

In 1890, Centralia, Pennsylvania, was a coal mining town of nearly 2,800 people — five hotels on its main street, twenty-seven saloons, two theaters, churches for every immigrant community that had come to work the anthracite mines. By 2020, the population was five. What happened between those two numbers is a story about a fire that could have been stopped for fifty thousand dollars and wasn't, about a small town built entirely on one industry and destroyed by the very resource that sustained it, and about two decades of government decisions — each one rational, none of them adequate — that let a fixable problem become a permanent catastrophe. The fire under Centralia is still burning. Engineers say it could burn for another 250 years. Sources David DeKok, Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire (Globe Pequot Press, 2009) and daviddekok.com Joan Quigley, The Day the Earth Caved In: An American Mining Tragedy (Random House, 2007) Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Centralia Mine Fire Resources and FAQ documents CentraliaPA.org — community history archives maintained by researchers and former residents Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Penn State University — "Inferno: The Centralia Mine Fire" Associated Press reporting by Michael Rubinkam (2012) and contemporaneous coverage in the Republican-Herald (Pottsville, PA)