IF YOU HAVE BEEN READING STATTER911 TODAY, you have seen the series of videos that he has posted (HERE) taken this past Saturday in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The aging coal-mining town suffered a destuctive downtown fire that destroyed two of its larger buildings and two other business.
But as bad as it was, it doesn’t compare to the devastation that took place in one of its neighbors just over the mountain to the west. Taking SR 54 west out of town you have but an 8-mile journey to what’s left of Centralia, a town that has been burning for 46 years and still going.
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Sitting right on top of one of the world’s richest veins of anthracite coal, Centralia was a prosperous community for more than 100 years with its citizens working in and servicing the four major coal mines in the area.
In 1961, as the coal industry was dwindling, a fire in the town dump burned down through a fissure and got into the coal vein and began burning the anthracite. As the fire slowly spread underneath the borough, openings would appear in the ground emitting steam and hot gasses. Eventually the carbon monoxide levels began rising in many of the homes and people were forced to leave.
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Over the next 20 years the state and the U.S. Dept. of Interior tried some stop-gap measures to contain the fire, but it was never enough of an effort to really be effective.
Then in 1981 a 12-yr.-old boy, Todd Domboski, was walking in a neighbor’s back yard when he fell into a hole that just opened up. As he went down the 4-ft. wide hole, he caught onto a tree root and held on until he was rescued. The hole was 150 ft. deep and went literally into the depths of hell, the fire itself.
The publicity that Domboski’s adventure generated brought nationwide attention to the plight of the town. But by then it was too late. Conditions got so bad that in the late 1980′s the Federal Government set up a funding scheme to buy out the residents and relocate them. Many of them are living in Shenandoah today.
As the government bought the homes, they would demolish them. Over the last 15 years this once-vibrant town of thousands filled with stores, churches, gas stations and schools has dwindled down to just a dozen buildings and its last seven residents.
Then and Now, 1986-2006
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offroaders.com photos
And the fire still burns. The experts say it will burn for another 100 years at least.
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If you are interested in reading about the tragic demise of this town, I can recommend a book that came out earlier this year. The Day The Earth Caved In by Joan Quigley, whose family goes back four generations in Centralia, tells the story of all the efforts and failures to save the town.
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