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Underground Fires (Coal Seam Fires; Etc.)

M

mejane

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Imagine the scene...

You're watching your young son innocently playing in the back yard when suddenly the earth opens and he disappears screaming into a pit where flames and fumes that would put Hell itself to shame spew out.

Fortunately, the child is saved by his own quick-thinking and the help of neighbours but soon other holes open up in the town taking with them gardens, even entire streets, and noxious fumes waft over the small community.

And all because, twenty years earlier, some unnamed twit threw a lighted cigarette (probably) into a garbage pile and ignited an undergound coal seam.

The town is Centralia, Pennslyvania and the fire is still burning forty years after the initial ignition. When the situation became intolerable most people moved to neighbouring towns with the help of federal compensation but, incredibly, some families chose to remain - and are still there living with the toxic fumes and hot, unstable ground.

Some links here and here

I've got a few questions I'd like to ask about this (in no particular order and I don't mind which direction if indeed any this thread goes):

Given a similar situation, would you choose to stay?
- if so, why?

Has there been any litigation concerning the Centralia fire?

Are there similar fires burning elsewhere in the world (there's a few in PA and I vaguely remember one in China)?
- is this the longest-running such fire?

And... several others which I'll add later when one of those "that reminds me" moments strikes me.

Jane.



phew... serious post... need to lie down now
 
id go!..and i wouldnt walk id run!... i seem to rememebr the China fire has been burning for hundreds of years if not longer!...


actuly in this area holes do open up under houses quite often (tin mines)... people live with it and only realy think of it when it happens next door or when buying a house.. one mate whith a house in redruth parks his car on an area of road he was told by the mine serveyor had a shaft under it, he hopes to get the insurance one day!
 
i read about thois in a bill brysaon book! it's hi-density coal and is predicted to burn for the odd millenium in the futur, i b'lieve./
 
The same sort of thing can happen with oil-bearing shales. ISTR there is/was even one such fire in the UK, possibly in the Dorset oil field.

Of course, if you did live over a place with fumes coming out the ground, you could try setting up an oracle there, breathing in the fumes and giving mysterious pronouncements to those who have made the appropriate offerings (Visa, Mastercard accepted)...
 
And another thing...

http://www.penweb.org/issues/mining/tribrev/swfires.html

Two fires are burning in Findlay Township, one near Clinton and one located on a hilltop off Route 60 - just several thousand feet south of the Pittsburgh International Airport runways.

There was some concern about 12 years ago that smoke coming off this fire could obscure vision on the airport runway, said Jones. This no longer appears to be a worry as the DEP has not been called back to extinguish the small blaze.

"And it's not a priority because of the lack of dwellings," Jones added.
Click to expand...

Er, and the prospect of a large airport disappearing into the ground isn't a priority? :confused:

Jane.
 
Yes, Dorset is on fire! At Kimmeridge

Lots of info and pictures. Also the Lyme Volcano.
(PS: click on the pics to get really LARGE versions!)
 
This has become the basis for the film setting of Christopher Gans' Silent Hill:
Screenwriter Roger Avary has said in interviews that as a boy his father, who is a mining engineer, used to tell him stories about the ghost town Centralia, Pennsylvania, where coal deposits from the local mine caught fire and caused toxic gasses to force the inhabitants to evacuate forever. Avary, it seems, was fascinated since childhood by the idea that fires underneath the town would be burning for a hundred years and the story of Centralia was used as the basis for the township of Silent Hill.
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In researching different elements of Silent Hill, screenwriter Roger Avary came across a town called Centralia which is in Pennsylvania. Centralia planted the seed for what developed into the town of Silent Hill.

This is a short documentary I made in 2003 about the town which inspired Silent Hill which has been linked to from various places on the net.
Click to expand...
See film here

(A but amateurish, but it features some haunting images.)
 
I've been! My Better Half and I made Centralia a stop on a road trip from Schenectady, New York to Charleston, South Carolina. It's definitely got a post-apocalyptic feel. The highway has been rerouted around what used to be the town, but you can park your car at the end of it and walk along the closed roads. The road is all cracked and broken and every so often you'll see smoke seeping out of one of those cracks. Looks like a small-scale version of every earthquake disaster movie ever made. I don't think there are very many houses still standing, but there are lots of driveways leading to empty foundations.

The area where the fire is at its worst gives the impression of being, hmm, I'm not sure how to put it, the world's weirdest garbage dump, maybe. There are all kinds of vents with smoke and odd smells pouring out. It's a weirdly big draw and when I was there there were a few other people milling around, exploring. Cops patrolling, even. There are signs (and yes, I have pictures somewhere, will try to get them up one of these days!) warning that this is a dangerous place to be wandering around in, but it's not actually illegal to be there. Enter at your own risk.

And when I was there there was still a bright red heart-shaped sign on a tree in the town's park that read "We Love Centralia." There's even a song entitled that. It's very sad to think of all the people forced out of their homes.
 
An interesting side note is the conspiracy aspect. People have regularly shot out the monitoring equipment because they think it's a government ploy to gain the rights to the coal. (The surface owners don't HAVE the coal rights anyway.) It's an interesting place to visit but it's an actually complicated story that often gets missed by the mainstream press.
 
Swifty said:
Bumping an old thread but the church at Centralia is still going ..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42781736


Click to expand...

And there's a nice article, beginning with that church, on the BBC website:
The town of Centralia has been left to die - but its last remaining church is thriving.

In Pennsylvania's coal-mining mountains, there's an empty grid where a town once lived.

Once, there were homes and gardens. Now there are weeds.

Before Centralia started burning from below, more than a thousand people lived here. At the last count, there were six.

The roads remain - on Google Maps, they have names like Railway Avenue and Apple Alley - but on the ground, they are ghost streets.

Nameless. Silent. Stripped bare. Anonymous, in every sense.

On the horizon, though, a piece of Centralia survives.

A white church rises between black trees. A blue dome shines against the snow.

Its congregation has left town, but Centralia's Ukrainian Catholic Church isn't going anywhere.
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42781736
 
About 50 odd years ago I seem to remember some children going through
the crust of a slag heap near Heywood lancs, it was on fire internaly and
they were never recovered they never managed to put the fire out,
though now there seems to be a housing estate were the slag heaps were
so someone could get a nasty shock.
 
Sharon Hill said:
An interesting side note is the conspiracy aspect. People have regularly shot out the monitoring equipment because they think it's a government ploy to gain the rights to the coal. (The surface owners don't HAVE the coal rights anyway.) It's an interesting place to visit but it's an actually complicated story that often gets missed by the mainstream press.
Click to expand...

As I understand it the town of Centralia (as a legal entity) holds the mineral rights, and this municipally-held status is unique in Pennsylvania. The state has been condemning and / or buying out the town's properties (via settlements) for at least a couple of decades. As long as there are any residents in Centralia, the town will continue to exist as a legal entity holding the mineral rights. Once this legal entity is disestablished, the mineral rights revert to the state.

This makes it easy to see how someone could construe it as a sort of conspiratorial land-grab to obtain the town's mineral rights. On the other hand, it's difficult to see any purpose in property owners' staying there, insofar as they don't hold any mineral rights and wouldn't profit from any subsequent mineral-related transactions. I can only presume the hangers-on are motivated by either sentimentality or spite.
 
EnolaGaia said:
As I understand it the town of Centralia (as a legal entity) holds the mineral rights, and this municipally-held status is unique in Pennsylvania. The state has been condemning and / or buying out the town's properties (via settlements) for at least a couple of decades. As long as there are any residents in Centralia, the town will continue to exist as a legal entity holding the mineral rights. Once this legal entity is disestablished, the mineral rights revert to the state.

This makes it easy to see how someone could construe it as a sort of conspiratorial land-grab to obtain the town's mineral rights. On the other hand, it's difficult to see any purpose in property owners' staying there, insofar as they don't hold any mineral rights and wouldn't profit from any subsequent mineral-related transactions. I can only presume the hangers-on are motivated by either sentimentality or spite.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the case. In this part of Pennsylvania, it is not feasible to mine the coal under people's houses but that has been done in the past and is still normal in western PA. The only mining feasible for Centralia is open pit strip mining of which there are many in the area. But coal markets are sharply down these days making the idea of mining this coal now, completely moot.

Back to the town, the most famous spot to visit now is the "penis trail", the closed-off roadway that has been, umm, decorated. It's actually very fun to look at all the artwork which is not phallus-shaped. This road is cracked and buckled and on a good day, it's spooky. You can find certain fissures that are still warm to the touch. The last time I visited, I recall standing in an area with slight wisps of smoke then noticing after a few minutes that my feet were getting quite warm... There have not been any other incidents of people falling into holes since the original incident.
 
There was a place in Wigan, Bradley Lane, that was on fire underground for many years, old coal seam i think? it absolutely stunk when you passed the area, i think now that it has been extinguished?

Pit spoil heap apparently - just googled it
 
Here's another everlasting fire, this time from Laurel Run, also in Pennsylvania. Details:
Wiki page

Started in 1915, so has been going for 105 years, which beats Centralia.
 
And slightly younger from 1916, still going, the Jharia coal field fire:
Wiki page

Absolute scandal, that one. Loads of health issues for people too poor to move out of the area.
 
Back in April, a major attraction of Centralia, the graffiti highway, was covered over (local news link). During the pandemic shutdown that began in mid-March, people started flocking to the town to have a look. So, drastic measures were taken. I suppose this will reduce the number of tourists. There isn't a whole lot to see there these days.
 
The graffiti seemed to be the second most famous thing about Centralia. Apparently there are still five people living there. Are they hermits or something?
 
GNC said:
The graffiti seemed to be the second most famous thing about Centralia. Apparently there are still five people living there. Are they hermits or something?
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No, they are very old and ornery. They believe it's all some conspiracy. They have never left the county, no need to. So why bother to move. The government agreed to allow them to live out their days there but they no longer own the land.
 
A conspiracy, how very 21st Century of them. I suppose if they've survived this long then let 'em stay.
 
Thanks for reinvigorating this thread as it's not a story I'd heard of at all – fascinating, and covering so many bases from a strange long-lasting fire to conspiracy theories. Just watched a short, informative video on YouTube, one of many by the looks of it.
 
GNC said:
A conspiracy, how very 21st Century of them. I suppose if they've survived this long then let 'em stay.
Click to expand...
Actually, the conspiracy angle appeared way back at its origin, and further. No one liked the coal companies, they cheated the locals. So it was a short step to the idea that the coal companies started or were faking the fire tale to rob the town of its coal. It didn't help that they actually later tried to gain access to the coal under the town. But there are many many details, disputes, and various opinions. You'd be amazed how convoluted the story of Centralia actually is.
 
Sharon Hill said:
No, they are very old and ornery. They believe it's all some conspiracy. They have never left the county, no need to. So why bother to move. The government agreed to allow them to live out their days there but they no longer own the land.
Click to expand...
I've seen a You Tube documentary on this town which looks at a young resident determined to keep "the town alive". It interviews some of the "it's the gub'mint" stereotypes but most only question the way the local government handled it, not if action was necessary.
The young man works out of town but commutes. He tends lawns of empty properties, paints and repairs fencing etc. and each Thanksgiving (at the time when the documentary is recorded) puts up street decorations, all at his own expense.
He does it because he hates for his childhood home to be forgotten, a community lost.
 
Stormkhan said:
I've seen a You Tube documentary on this town which looks at a young resident determined to keep "the town alive". It interviews some of the "it's the gub'mint" stereotypes but most only question the way the local government handled it, not if action was necessary.
The young man works out of town but commutes. He tends lawns of empty properties, paints and repairs fencing etc. and each Thanksgiving (at the time when the documentary is recorded) puts up street decorations, all at his own expense.
He does it because he hates for his childhood home to be forgotten, a community lost.
Click to expand...
Too late. It doesn't officially exist anymore.

Edit: I'd add that there are NO jobs or services around here (that's why he has to commute). No one will want to move there in the near future, although the surrounding cost of living is exceedingly cheap. The eastern PA coal regions need to reinvent themselves. It will take time. But dwelling in the past and trying to recapture nostalgia isn't going to cut it.
 
As a Heritage person I find that last sentence very interesting.

Sometimes you have to let the past die.

Too many die over ages old grudges.
 
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