In May 1962, the council of Centralia, Pennsylvania, met to discuss tidying the town up before Memorial Day. The new landfill, dug into an abandoned strip mine on the edge of town, had become an eyesore. The usual solution was to burn it.
What nobody had fully accounted for was what lay underneath. Centralia sat on a labyrinth of old anthracite mines, and the fire found its way down through an opening into the coal seams. The exact cause is still argued over, but the most widely accepted account is that the dump fire started it.
It never went out.
The fire now burns at depths of up to 90 m (300 ft), spread across roughly 13 km (8 miles) of old workings. Smoke and steam vent through cracks in the ground. Carbon monoxide seeps into basements. Roads buckle. Stretches of the main highway were abandoned and eventually buried under earth to keep people off them.
By 1983, the federal Office of Surface Mining had worked out what it would cost to put the fire out: $663 million. The following year, Congress set aside $42 million to buy the residents out instead. Most of them took it. Houses were demolished as they emptied, the state later claimed the whole borough by eminent domain, and in 2002 Centralia lost its postcode.
For comparison:
- Population when the fire started: about 1,500
- Population at the 2020 census: 5
- Cost to extinguish, 1983 estimate: $663 million
- Cost to relocate the town instead: $42 million
The handful who stayed negotiated the right to live out their lives there. When they die, the state takes the land.
At its current rate, there is enough coal down there to keep the fire going for around 250 years. If that holds, it will still be burning in 2276 — further from today than today is from the signing of the US Constitution.
Somewhere under a Pennsylvania hillside, a rubbish fire lit to tidy up for a public holiday is still going.