Centralia mine fire

The Centralia mine fire is a coal seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States since May 27, 1962 or earlier. There are several theories as to how it started. The fire has resulted in most of the town being abandoned. Population has dwindled from 2,761 in 1890 to 10 in 2010. The town's ZIP code was revoked by the United States Postal Service in 2002.

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 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit [540 degrees Celsius]. Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled through the rock chambers.^[1] — David DeKok, Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986)

A small part of the Centralia mine fire after being exposed during excavation in 1969

Background

On May 7, 1962, the Centralia Council met to discuss the approaching Memorial Day and how the town would go about cleaning up the Centralia landfill recently introduced in early 1962. The three hundred-foot wide, seventy five-foot long pit was made up of a fifty-foot-deep strip mine that had been cleared by Edward Whitney in 1935, and came very close to the northeast corner of the Odd Fellows Cemetery. There were eight illegitimate dumps spread about Centralia, and Council's intention in using the landfill was to stop the illegal dumping, as new state regulations had forced the town to close an earlier official dump west of St. Ignatius Cemetery. Trustees at the cemetery were against the landfill's proximity to the cemetery, but recognized the illegal dumping elsewhere as a serious issue and envisioned that the new pit would resolve it.^[2]

Pennsylvania had passed a precautionary law in 1956 to regulate landfill use in strip mines, as the state knew of their tendency to cause destructive mine fires. A permit, and regular inspection was required for a municipality to use such a pit. A regional landfill inspector who worked for the Department of Mines and Mineral Industries by the name of George Segaritus became concerned regarding the pit when he noticed holes in the walls and floor, as mines of such nature under Centralia often cut through older mines underneath. Segaritus informed Joseph Tighe, a councilman of Centralia, that the pit would require filling with an incombustible material.^[2]

The Fire

The town council’s minutes do not describe the actual process by which the dump would be cleared (setting it on fire); and it’s speculated that this is because state law prohibited dump fires. Nonetheless, the council chose the date of May 27, 1962 to clean the landfill, the Centralia Council hired five members of the volunteer firefighter company to clean up the landfill, and the fire was ignited. Although water was used to douse the visible flames that night, the flames were seen once more Tuesday evening, May 29. Using hoses hooked up from Locust Avenue, another attempt was made to douse the fire that night. Another flare-up the week following June 4 caused the Centralia Fire Company to once again douse it with hoses. An attempt was then made with a bulldozer to stir up the garbage so that firemen could douse concealed layers of the burning waste. A few days after this attempt, a discovery was made in the base of the north wall of the pit: a hole as long as fifteen feet and several feet high. Garbage, which had concealed the hole, prevented it from being filled with incombustible material. Many argue that this was the hole that led to the mine fire, as it was the only hole the fire needed. There is evidence that the landfill fire continued to smoulder, as a complaint was filed July 2 from Monsignor William J. Burke about foul odors from the blaze reaching St. Ignatius Church. Even then, Centralia Council still allowed the dumping of garbage into the pit.^[2]

A member of the council placed a call to Clarence "Mooch" Kashner, the president of the Independent Miners, Breakermen, and Truckers, to inspect the situation in Centralia. Kasher saw the events that had taken place, and called Gordon Smith, an engineer of the DMMI (Department of Mining and Mineral Industries) office in Pottsville. Smith told the town that he could dig out the smouldering material using a steam shovel for the price of only $175. Another call was placed to Art Joyce, a mine inspector hailing from Mount Carmel, who brought gas detection equipment for use on the swirling wisps of smoke now emanating from fissures in the north wall of the landfill pit. It was indeed concluded that the gases seeping from the large hole in the pit wall and from cracks in the north wall contained an amount of carbon monoxide typical with mine fires.^[2]

Prevention

Immediately, a letter was sent to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company as a formal notice of the fire. In the letter addressed, the borough describes the starting of a fire "of unknown origin... during a period of unusually hot weather." However, the town council decided that hiding the true origin of the fire would serve better than alerting the LVCC of the truth, which would most likely end in receiving no help from them.^[2]

Preceding an August 6 meeting at the fire site which would include officials from the Lehigh Valley Coal and Susquehanna Coal Company, Deputy Secretary of Mines James Shober Sr. expected that the representatives would inform him that they could not afford mounting a project that would stop the mine fire. Therefore, at this meeting Shober announced that he expected the state to finance the cost of digging out the fire, which was at that time around $30,000. Another offer came up at this August 6 meeting, proposed by Alonzo Sanchez, a Centralia strip mine operator who told members of Centralia Council that he would dig out the mine fire free of charge as long as he could claim any coal he recovered without paying royalties to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company. Part of Sanchez's plan was to do exploratory drilling to surmise the scope of the mine fire at that point, which was most likely why Sanchez's offer was rejected at the meeting. The drilling would have delayed the project, not to mention the legal issues with mining rights.^[2]

At that point in time, state mine inspectors were in the Centralia-area mines almost daily to check for lethal levels of carbon monoxide, which was found on August 9, signaling the closing of all Centralia-area mines the next day. Pressed from an August 12 meeting of the United Mine Works of America in Centralia, Secretary of Mines Lewis Evans sent a letter to the group on August 15 that claimed he had authorized a project to deal with the mine fire, and that bids for the project would be opened on August 17. It only took two days for the contract to be awarded to Bridy, Inc., a company near Mount Carmel, for an estimate of $20,000. Work on the project began on August 22.^[2]

First Project

The DMMI, who originally believed Bridy would need only to excavate 24,000 cubic yards of earth, informed him that he was forbidden to do any exploratory drilling in order to find the perimeter of the fire or how deep it was, and that he was to follow only plans drawn up by engineers who did not believe the fire was very big or active. It was instead guessed where the fire was located based upon how much steam was issuing from the landfill rock. Bridy began digging on the northern perimeter of the dump pit rim and excavated about 200 feet outward to expand the perimeter. As soon as Bridy's equipment opened the mine chambers below, large amounts of air would rush in to fuel the fire. Steve Kisela, a bulldozer operator in Bridy's project, said that the project was ineffective because the fire had moved ahead of the excavation by the time a section was drilled and blasted. Bridy was also using a 2.5 cubic-yard shovel, which was considered small for the project. Also, he was allowed by the state only to work a single shift of eight hours a day throughout weekdays. At one point, work was at a standstill for five days between a Labor Day weekend in 1962. And as always, the fire was moving northward and thus deeper, greatly increasing the cost of excavating it. Bridy had only excavated 58,580 cubic yards of earth by the time the project ran out of money and was ended on October 29.^[2]

Second Project

On October 29, even before Bridy's project had ceased, a new project, estimated to cost $40,000, was proposed that included flushing the mine fire. Crushed rock would be mixed with water to pump into Centralia's mines ahead of the expected fire area. Bids were opened on November 1, followed by the awarding of the low bid from K&H Excavating to the cost of $28,400.^[2]

At the time of the project, Centralia experienced an unusually heavy period of snowfall. Nonetheless, drilling was conducted through holes spaced twenty feet apart in the shape of a semicircle along the edge of the landfill. Because of the winter temperatures during the project, water lines used to supply water to the flushing material froze, as did the machine used to grind the rock for flushing during a windy blizzard. The DMMI, worried that the ten-thousand cubic yards of flushing material would not be enough to fill the mines, did not allow the boreholes to be filled completely with material, thus giving the choked mine fire a possible route of escape.^[2]

Secretary Lewis Evans approved an additional $14,000 for the second project after concerns that money was running out quickly, but it was not enough; money for the project ended on March 15, 1963 with a total cost of $42,420. On April 11, surface evidence was found in Centralia that the mine fire had spread eastward as far as seven hundred feet from its original starting place, and more holes in the earth began coughing forth steam.^[2]

Third Proposal

A three option proposal was drawn up soon after that could begin July 1 along with the new fiscal year. The first plan, costing $277,490, consisted of entrenching the fire and back-filling the trench with incombustible material. The second, costing $151,714, offered a smaller trench in an incomplete circle, followed by the completion of the circle with a flush barrier. The third plan was a "total and concerted flushing project" larger than the second project's flushing and only costing $82,300.

Theories

The first theory is that in an unsealed opening in the pit allowed the fire to enter the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia. Joan Quigley argues in her 2007 book, The Day the Earth Caved In, that the fire had in fact started the previous day, when a trash hauler dumped hot ash or coal discarded from coal burners into the open trash pit. She noted that borough council minutes from June 4, 1962 referred to two fires at the dump, and that five firefighters had submitted bills for "fighting the fire at the landfill area". The borough, by law, was responsible for installing a fire-resistant clay barrier between each layer, but fell behind schedule, leaving the barrier incomplete. This allowed the hot coals to penetrate the vein of coal underneath the pit and light the subsequent subterranean fire. In addition to the council minutes, Quigley cites "interviews with volunteer firemen, the former fire chief, borough officials, and several eyewitnesses" as her sources for this explanation of the fire.^[3][4]

Another theory is the Bast Theory. It states that the fire was burning long before the alleged trash dump fire. According to legend, the Bast Colliery coal fire of 1932, set alight by an explosion, was never fully extinguished. In 1962, it reached the landfill area. Those who follow the Bast Theory believe that the dump fire is a separate fire unrelated to the Centralia mine fire. One man who disagrees with that is Frank Jurgill Sr. who claims he operated a bootleg mine with his brother in the vicinity of the landfill between 1960 and 1962. He says that if the Bast Colliery fire was never put out, he and his brother would have been in it and killed by the gases.^[2] Based on this and due to overwhelmingly contrary evidence, few hold this position, and it is given little credibility.

Centralia councilman Joseph Tighe had his own theory that said that Centralia’s coal fire was actually started by an adjacent coal seam fire that had been burning west of Centralia’s. His belief is that the adjacent fire was at one time partially excavated, but nonetheless set alight the landfill on May 27.^[2]

Another theory yet remains, begun by a letter sent to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company in the few days after the mine fire was noticed. The letter describes "a fire of unknown origin [starting] on or about June 25, 1962, during a period of unusually hot weather." This may make a reference to the theory of spontaneous combustion being the reason for the start of the landfill fire, a theory accepted for many years by state and federal officials.^[2]

Aftermath

There is no current way to prove that the mine fire of Centralia, Pennsylvania started on May 27, 1962. A few weeks after the fire started, the Centralia fire company made several attempts to extinguish the dump blaze by using a bulldozer and soaking the pit with hoses. A few days after this, the firemen discovered that the pit was fifteen feet long and several feet high. The hole led to the labyrinth of old mines and was the path that the fire spread to underneath the borough. The fire department failed at their attempts to quench the blaze and the smell of the smoldering trash and coal wafted into St. Ignatius Church prompting complaints. David DeKok began reporting on the mine fire as a reporter for The News-Item in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, beginning in late 1976. Between then and 1986, he wrote just over 500 news stories about the mine fire. Beginning in 1980, adverse health effects were reported by several people due to the byproducts of the fire: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and a lack of healthy oxygen levels.^{[citation needed]}

The location at which the former route of PA Route 61 terminates due to the mine fire.

In 1979, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a gas-station owner and then mayor, John Coddington, inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F (77.8 °C). Statewide attention to the fire began to increase, culminating in 1981 when a 12-year-old resident named Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole 4 feet (1.2 m) wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet in a backyard.^[5] His cousin, 14-year-old Eric Wolfgang, in pulling Todd out of the hole, saved Todd's life, as the plume of hot steam billowing from the hole was measured as containing a lethal level of carbon monoxide. ^[6]

In 1984, the U.S. Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation efforts. Most of the residents accepted buyout offers and moved to the nearby communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. A few families opted to stay despite earnings from Pennsylvania officials.^{[citation needed]}

In 1992, Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain on all properties in the borough, condemning all the buildings within. A subsequent legal effort by residents to have the decision reversed failed. In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service revoked Centralia's ZIP code, 17927.^[7][8] In 2009, Governor Ed Rendell began the formal eviction of Centralia residents.^[9] The fire still burns to this day in Centralia. If it burns at the rate it is now, it may burn for over 250 more years. The town has now grown to be a tourist attraction to see the smoke and the abandoned portion of PA Route 61.

The Centralia mine fire extended beneath the town of Byrnesville a few miles to the south and caused it also to be abandoned.^[10]

Gallery

• 

  The Buck Vein Outcrop

• 

  A plume of smoke wafts from the ground.

• 

  Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church

• 

  A DEP monitoring hole

• 

  A DEP underground reading of 187°F (86°C)

• 

  The ruined section of Route 61, Centralia

See also

• Ashland, Pennsylvania
• Byrnesville, Pennsylvania
• Coal seam fire
• Ghost town
• Laurel Run mine fire
• Strip mining

References