A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Centralia Underground Mine Fire
Join Kelli as she talks about the inspiration for the Silent Hill games and movies - the ghost town of Centralia! In 1962, a fire set the underground coal mines on fire, and they've been burning to this day. Experts believe that the fires will continue to burn underneath Centralia for another 250 years!
While Silent Hill and its scares don't exist, the horrors inflicted on Centralia may be even scarier...
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Sources referenced:
Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire by David DeKok
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
Just a quick reminder that you can support me and the show on Patreon, just look up either A Popular History of Unpopular Things or APHOUT: A-P-H-O-U-T. And you can also now watch episodes on YouTube - so go subscribe to my channel there! I appreciate all the love and support :)
Every once in a while, when I’m crocheting or faffing about in my office, I put on a horror movie. I’ve always loved horror movies, and I don’t discriminate. Incredible ones like The Thing? Great. Put it on. B-movies that went straight to DVD? Awesome. Love ‘em. I recommend the Cube series, by the way, for anyone who wants a campy but interesting franchise. And one of my favorite horror movies - and it gets mixed reviews, but I love it anyway - is the Silent Hill movie that came out in 2006, based on the video game series of the same name. The year I graduated high school! It’s supposed to be an amalgamation of the first couple of Silent Hill games. For example, one of the main baddies, Pyramid Head, is from Silent Hill 2. But running around town looking for your missing daughter, is adapted from the first Silent Hill. It also uses the music from the games, which is fun because the soundtracks of the first few games are great. I think that’s why I like the movie so much - it captures the vibe perfectly.
But anyway. I was watching Silent Hill again recently, and it got me thinking about the real Silent Hill. Because although Silent Hill isn’t a real town, it’s loosely based on Centralia, a mining town in Pennsylvania that was eventually abandoned because of underground coal fires that ignited in 1962 and are still burning to this day. That’s right - a town sitting on top of an abandoned, burning coal mine.
So today, I want to talk about Centralia and the fire burning deep down below the surface in the old coal mines. Because how awesome and weird and creepy is that?!
So for fans out there of the movie franchise, the game series, or both, let’s learn more about the historical context surrounding this coal-mining ghost town by looking at how and why an underground coal mine can ignite, and what that means for the town above.
So let’s get started!
Historical Context
Centralia, geographically, is located in eastern-central Pennsylvania. It sits on the Appalachian Mountains, which means, like a lot of Appalachian towns, it sits on a coal bed.
Now I’ve done an episode on coal and mines before, the Monongah Mine Disaster, where a bunch of runaway mine cars fell back down into the mines and caused a spark, which ignited an explosion, killing all but 5 miners inside. I’m not trying to repeat too much of the context from that episode, but it is worth saying again that there is a massive bed of coal running underneath the Appalachian Mountains.
Coal, of course, is a nonrenewable resource that we use for energy or to create other products, like coke - not the drug… or the soda. Coke, in this context, is a product of coal that produces more heat because it contains more carbon. It’s a better fuel and energy source.
Now coal mining in the Appalachians began in the mid-1700s, supplying local towns and small-scale commercial operations. But the real explosion of the coal mining industry - no pun intended, sorry Monongah - wasn’t until the 1800s, when railroad lines connected to these coal towns. The improved transportation was good for everyone - it enabled people to access different parts of the country and settle down in new regions, creating even more Appalachian towns. It allowed for the natural resources found here - coal, sure, but also other minerals and timber - to be exported to different markets,creating more demand for what Appalachia had to offer. Once steel mills were built in the mid-19th century, that’s the mid-1800s, we get yet another bump in the demand and production of coal and coke.
My point is that coal, especially this massive coal seam running up and down the Appalachians, boosted the American economy, and new towns popped up to accommodate the growing number of people flocking to the mines for work.
Centralia, incorporated in 1866, was one of these new coal mining towns. Some people were living here before Centralia’s official incorporation date, but the town itself, like the industry, really took off when railroads connected the local mines to the wider market. At its peak, Centralia had a population of 2,761 in 1890. There were fourteen different coal mines owned by a variety of different groups, and things were booming. However, over time, mining operations slowed down - it was a combination of both WWI and WWII enlisting the miners to go off and fight in the wars, leading to a labor supply issue; the Great Depression that followed the Stock Market Crash of 1929 which killed off some of the mining companies, so some mines closed down; miner strikes that weakened the industry further, and then there was a general decline in the demand for coal since there was so much supply from mines across the country.
Centralia, once a bustling coal mining town, was slowly emptying. Its peak population was more than 2,700 in 1890, right? But by 1960, the population was down to 1,435, according to census data. Almost half of what it once was. Those in charge of the town needed to come up with a solution - what do we do with these abandoned mines and coal pits that are unsightly, polluting the local environment, and serve as a stark reminder of what the town once was?
Well, in early 1962, they decided to turn one of the open-air strip mine pits into a landfill.
The Fire Begins
Now back in 1956, Pennsylvania passed a law that regulated the use of these types of pits as landfills, because they had a history of causing mine fires. So, towns like Centralia would have to apply for a permit and consent to inspections to make sure a fire wouldn’t break out. Great. Sounds like a good idea.
So an inspector came and looked at the Centralia pit in question and noticed some holes in the walls and cracks in the floor of the pit, which opened up access to the mines below. These would need to be plugged up with materials that couldn’t burn so that the mine below wouldn’t catch fire. Fair enough. Centralia got to work plugging the holes and, eventually, the pit was ready to serve as a landfill.
Now another thing that Centralia routinely did was burn their landfills. Pennsylvania State law prohibited dump fires, but Centralia did them anyway. It was a convenient way to get rid of some of the landfill waste, making room for more. So, over Memorial Day weekend, 1962, the council instructed the local fire department to conduct a controlled burn of the pit landfill.
The fire went ahead as scheduled, and when it looked like the bulk of it had burned away, the fire department soaked it with water until they thought it was out. Can you guess what’s coming? The fire wasn’t completely out. It looked like it from the surface, but the fire dug deeper than they anticipated, smoldering near the bottom of the landfill, just above the plugged holes and cracks of the strip mining pit that led to the mine tunnels below.
So two days after they supposedly put out this fire, someone walking by noticed that there was still smoke and flames coming out of the landfill, so the firefighters were called back to cover it with more water. But the fire kept coming back. So the firefighters had to go deeper into the landfill, moving waste aside to see how far down the embers were burning. And in doing so, they discovered a hole - about 15 feet long and several feet high - at the base of one of the walls. It had never been filled. And this hole led right into the labyrinth of tunnels of the old mines running underneath the town.
It was in mid-July, during a monthly inspection of the pit, that it was confirmed that the mines underneath the landfill were definitely on fire; they were able to measure large amounts of carbon monoxide coming out from the cracks and holes, something that could only come from the mine fires below, not the landfill trash. The carbon floating around in the mine shafts and tunnels and the pockets of methane and other gases that naturally occur in and around coal seams - had ignited.
Ooh, let’s talk about how carbon monoxide kills you. Fun!
Carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless, so it’s hard to detect. It comes from burning fuels like gas, wood, propane, charcoal, any of that stuff. It’s why you shouldn’t have a fire in an enclosed space, like a camping stove in a sealed-up tent, because of carbon monoxide accumulation.
Now when there is a lot of carbon monoxide in the air, it gets absorbed into your bloodstream. The body replaces oxygen in your red blood cells with carbon monoxide, which causes tissue damage. The symptoms are headaches, weakness, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, confusion, blurry vision, drowsiness, and when it gets really bad, a loss of muscle control and eventually consciousness. Repeated or prolonged exposure can lead to memory loss, changes in your personality, or problems with movement - these can be permanent complications depending on the severity of the exposure.
If you’re in a space that has too much carbon monoxide - go outside. You need to breathe in more oxygen to replace the carbon monoxide in your blood. But the real danger is if you are already asleep - the carbon monoxide can kill you and you won’t even know it, because you’ll just never wake up. For those who have been exposed to a lot of carbon monoxide, they need access to oxygen masks to breathe in pure oxygen.
And here’s my public service announcement - your home needs to have a carbon monoxide detector. A lot of times you can get a combination fire and carbon monoxide detector, you know, the round things on your ceilings. Remember that carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless, so you won’t be able to detect it on your own. And it can leak out of faulty appliances, furnaces, boilers… stuff like that. Be safe out there!
Now in his book Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy Of The Centralia Mine Fire, David Dekok, an expert on the topic who spent many years trying to help, puts it out there that the evidence overwhelmingly points to the landfill fire as the cause of the mine fire. However, Centralia council members disputed this, so there was some controversy over what could have caused it - for example, some claimed that the mines were already on fire before the landfill. Dekok did an excellent job laying it all out there, looking at all sorts of records, and I’m confident in his assertion that the landfill, which was not properly plugged up, and was illegally and regularly set on fire, spread to the mines below.
And also keep in mind that the fires would spread pretty quickly underground - the passageways built by the miners are pockets of air that feed oxygen to the fire and provide it space to travel - the whole thing would have been ablaze, and any cracks leading to the surface would not only allow the fire to continue burning underground, but also put out all kinds of nasty things like carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the air, poisoning the local inhabitants.
I love the way Dekok describes it in his book. It paints a really vivid picture of what the mines were like. Quote -
“The uncontrolled mine fire moved farther and deeper into the labyrinth of mines beneath [Centralia]. The fire created a deadly world of intense heat and poisonous gases. The blackness of the old mines changed to bright, flowing orange and flickering blue, occasionally punctuated by a brief, brilliant burst of yellow when a mine timber erupted in flames. This was a world where no human could live, hotter than the planet Mercury, its atmosphere as poisonous as Saturn’s. At the heart of the fire, temperatures easily exceeded one thousand degrees (Fahrenheit). Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled around through the rock chambers.” End quote.
And remember, since there were, what, 14 mines? And most were connected? There were so many passageways for the fire to travel and grow. And many of these passageways, abandoned and picked at for decades, were open to the surface through cracks or straight-up holes. We call that subsidence [sub-SIGH-dense] - when there is a cave-in, or a hole, or a sinking in the ground. There were lots of those dotted around Centralia. Which means, again, that there is a constant supply of oxygen for the underground fires, but also ways for the toxic gases to flood the town and surrounding area. But according to Dekok, that doesn’t matter anyway. Quote:
“Even in the unlikely case that all the openings could be found and sealed, the fire could actually draw air through the earth itself.” End quote.
Fighting the Fires
So now that we’ve got a mine on fire, well, several mines on fire, what do we do? Well, the first plan would be to put it out, right? So how do you go about putting out an underground mine fire?
Well, in short, you don’t. I mean, it can technically be done, but it’s really difficult to do so, and it depends on the mine itself. And its costly and could take a long time. For example, the Lehigh Navigation Coal Company had a mine fire that began in 1859, and it took them eighty years and over $2 million to put it out in the 1940s - that would be around 45 million today. And that was an active coal mine run by a company with money! Some of the Centralia mines were abandoned, so where would the money come from? Well, either the Centralia municipality, the county government, the State, or the Federal government, right? The State could allocate some funds for it, but bigger mine fires in nearby Scranton had sapped most of those reserves set aside for dealing with mine fires.
But despite all of this, the Centralia council still had to try to put it out. I mean you can’t just… I don’t know, leave a fire burning underground so all your citizens get super sick, right? :/
First, they tried excavating some of the land outside of where they thought the fire was - to prevent it from spreading more. The idea was to build a trench around where they thought the fire was, to contain it. But every time they drilled, they discovered the fire had already spread there. So that didn’t work.
Next, they tried to smother it, get rid of its air supply, so the fire would slowly die out. It’s like putting the top of a jarred candle back on and watching the fire slowly die - if there’s no oxygen, the fire can’t feed, and it eventually is snuffed out, right? So the plan was to pump crushed rock and water into the mines. It would be expensive, and there wasn’t really enough water available to do this, but they went ahead and tried it anyway.
On the first day, the drill they used to create access holes to the fire below melted. When they eventually managed to get the rock and water into the holes, one of the inspectors noted that, quote,
“when you dumped water in it, it created like a volcano. And oh boy, when that busted, did that shake things and make a noise. It was red hot mad!” End quote.
They kept going, but the project ended up failing because it was too expensive and there wasn’t enough water to completely put out the fire. It wrapped up in mid-March, 1963, cost over $42,000, and didn’t solve the problem.
The next plan was to build a massive trench on the eastern edge of the mine fire. This would theoretically prevent it from spreading further in that direction, but would also serve as a chimney of sorts - the carbon monoxide and other gases could vent out this trench, hopefully sparing the air in and around the town. There were other projects proposed, but they all cost way too much and the state government wasn’t willing to fund them; the trench was the cheapest option. They began working on the trench in July 1963. But quickly, they found that the fire had already spread there. It might have been helpful, had they kept going and done this trench properly, but the project was called off in October when it was discovered that the fire was on both sides of it.
There wouldn’t be a fourth serious attempt to put out the mine fires for another three and a half years. And by that point, it was too late, because the fire had grown even larger. And essentially, every time they did some exploratory drilling to see how far the fire had progressed, it was much farther along than they anticipated, making the project even more expensive. So, any concrete plans they had about putting the fire out were abandoned. The State had money to tackle underground mine fires, but they didn’t seem to have money for them; as Dekok puts it simply, quote, “the cost-benefit ratio just wasn’t favorable to Centralia.” The town was forgotten.
A Town Forgotten
Now some work was carried out over the years, but it was never really a proper solution. In 1967, they tried filling some of the cracks in and around Centralia’s streets with fly ash, which is a fine, non-combustible by-product of burning coal. The idea was to fill any voids with this stuff, so the fire couldn’t spread there. It wasn’t a great solution, but they didn’t tell Centralia’s residents that. And today, we know that fly ash is really toxic and can cause all kinds of cancers and whatnot. It’s also filled with toxic metals that can leach into underground water supplies, polluting those. But we didn’t know that back then.
Now when they started drilling holes and opening up pits in town to fill the mines with fly ash, the people suffered from the massive amounts of carbon monoxide that flooded the air - people got sick, plants were dying, and it was seeping into people’s houses through open windows. You can look up pictures of places where the steam escaped from cracks in the ground, and the trees around it are all dead. It makes it super clear to see where the carbon monoxide is escaping from the mines below.
It was at this point that people started leaving their homes - some temporarily, some permanently. It was clear that the fire was underneath Centralia, it was kicking out toxic gasses, the government wasn’t really doing anything to solve the problem, and to stay might mean death.
They tried a few more solutions once they cut through enough red tape and bureaucracy. In 1969, they built another trench to help vent any toxic fumes that got around that fly ash barrier they put in. And it seemed like that might have helped, actually. But then the construction got too expensive, and state and federal officials ended the project and told contractors to fill the trench hole back in. It was the wrong choice. Daniel Lewis of the US Bureau of Mines, who was instrumental in trying to put out Centralia’s fires, said, quote,
“Then when he got to the massive fire, the massive burning pillars, and we ran out of money, and he couldn’t get no more money, then orders were we had to backfill that… We had the fire [in our grasp]. There’s no question about it. I’ll stand on that till the day I die. We had the fire.” End quote.
Once again, it was a question of money. The state and federal government were willing to allocate some money, but not enough to see the project done properly, because Centralia wasn’t as bustling a mining town as, say, Scranton. So, because of this, it was denied the funding and resources needed to put this fire out before it spiraled out of control.
The population of Centralia in 1960 was, according to Census data, 1,435. In 1980, it was just over 1000. And even though it was almost 20 years after the mine fire began, things were getting worse.
On Valentine’s Day in 1981, a 12-year-old fell into a subsidence that opened up in Centralia. The hole it created swallowed the boy up, and vomited steam with lethal amounts of carbon monoxide into the air. Luckily, they got the boy out and he survived the incident. But it shook up town and state officials, and they put together another task force to see what could be done.
The following month, in March of 1981, the residents who remained in Centralia had a pretty big scare when a big pocket of carbon monoxide almost killed a bunch of residents. Holes and cracks were opening up all the time from the fires burning underground, and subsidence was still a major problem. A heavy concentration of carbon monoxide leaked into homes one night, making families feel the now-familiar sleepy symptoms they were accustomed to as residents of Centralia. They used carbon monoxide monitors to keep track, and if the carbon monoxide reached a certain point, they were supposed to alert inspectors. Well, on the night of the 19th, the carbon monoxide alarms (that were working properly) were going crazy. One family, the Coddingtons, didn’t have their alarm plugged in; they had loaned it to a neighbor. The father, John Coddington, got sleepy from the carbon monoxide seeping into his home and went to bed. In the night, he awoke, unable to breathe, and fell onto the floor, alerting his family that something was wrong. He was rushed to the hospital, and it probably saved everyone’s lives that night, because it got them up and out before the carbon monoxide killed them in their sleep.
At this point, it had been so long and the fires had gotten so out of control that it was unlikely they could be put out. More plans were drawn up, but they were deemed to be too expensive, and it would take years of construction and disruption without a guarantee that it would work. So in the end, the plan was to fund the relocation of the population.
In 1980, the population was 1,017. In 1990, the Census reported a population of 63. And as of the most recent census, 2020, the population of Centralia was listed as 5. And once those who stayed behind in Centralia die, their houses will be transferred to the state, and Centralia will no longer be a town. Just the ghost of what once was.
Dekok puts it really well in the close of his book. Quote:
“Centralia will live on for a time in the memories of its former residents, but eventually they, too, will die. Only the written and filmic record will remain to tell this story of how the [ruination] of the land created conditions for the town’s destruction, how human misjudgement struck the match, and how bureaucracy let the Centralia mine fire burn, unable to figure out how to stop it.” End quote.
The fire still burns today. And experts say it will burn for another 250 years. And the thing is, it’s not even the only underground mine fire in Pennsylvania - there are currently, as of late 2023, early 2024, 38 known active mine fires in the state alone. There are reportedly 259 in the whole country, and those are just the documented ones.
But Centralia stands out as an example of what not to do in case of a mine fire. First, it showed us what happens when a mine fire is allowed to go out of control. And second, it taught us that we need to attack the mine fire as early as possible with everything we’ve got - money, time, and resources - to prevent it from swallowing up the town whole.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of The Underground Coal Fires. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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