veruca-assault: These are some Instagram snapshots from a daytrip I took out to the abandoned town o
veruca-assault:These are some Instagram snapshots from a daytrip I took out to the abandoned town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, last weekend. Centralia, deep in the heart of coal country, is a former mining town that has had a coal seam fire burning under it for over 50 years. The fire is believed to have started in 1962, most likely in a landfill that was formerly a strip mine, which then ignited a coal vein near the surface, spreading the fire underground.The town tried to contain the fire for nearly two decades (note the old steam vent in the last row of photos), but by the early ‘80s, the fire was having a significant impact on the residents. The ground was hot – so hot that vegetation above the fire would no longer grow, and the only gas station in town had to shut down for fear of the heat igniting its underground gas tanks. Cracks in the ground opened up, with steam and lethal levels of noxious gases escaping them. Sinkholes were another problem – in 1981, a boy almost died when the ground gave way beneath him while he stood in his grandmother’s backyard. Even a portion of Route 61 that ran through the town had to be closed and re-routed, due to the constant cracking and buckling of the ground. (It’s now known as Graffiti Highway – for obvious reasons, as you can see in the photos above. I have more photos of the graffiti that I’ll upload in another post.)In 1984, with the dangers of the underground fire clearly evident, federal funds were used to finance a buyout program so the town residents could be relocated out of harm’s way. Some chose to stay despite the risk – but by 1990, a town whose population once stood at about 2800 people dwindled down to only 63.In 1992, Pennsylvania used eminent domain to seize and condemn all the properties within the town, and to start evicting the remaining residents. The residents fought back, and in 2013, an agreement was reached that allowed the few people still living in Centralia to remain in their homes until their deaths – upon which Pennsylvania would take their homes. At last count, there were still 7 people living in the town.The only structures still standing in Centralia, besides a handful of homes and 4 cemeteries, are the municipal building, and a Catholic church that still holds services several times a week. Everything else has been knocked down, leaving a grid of streets that are slowly being taken back by nature. Occasionally, you will see a curb or sets of stairs leading to nowhere that remind you this was once a small but thriving town, destroyed by an underground fire that will continue to burn for hundreds of years to come. -- source link
#centralia#pennsylvania#american gothic