One hell of a city

Dear reader,

American readers of my blog may know the town of Centralia in Pennsylvania. I want to shortly introduce it to everyone else in this entry. No, I haven't been there ever. I haven't been to America ever actually. But I found out about it in a documentary on television and think it's pretty impressive.

Centralia is a very small place. According to wikipedia, effective 2010, the town only had 10 residents. In 1986 it had been "over 1,000 residents" (German wikipedia). The reason for so many residents moving, are the fires underground since 1962. Yes, you read correctly. The residents of Centralia lived from anthracite coal mining. This coal caught fire and burns ever since in the mine pits underneath the town. Anthracite coal burns long and steady. That's why tries to extinguish the fires failed, because the fire ate its way through the barriers. Now they stopped trying to extinguish the fires.

There are two theories (on the German wikipedia page) on how the fire started. In the documentary only one was mentioned. Members of the members of the volunteer fire company wanted to clean up the town landfill, so they burned it all up. The landfill was relocated to the abandoned mine pits, which didn't have coal anymore. But the fire went also to the pits with coal.

Another theory is that the coal just selfignighted. Scientists, according to the German wikipedia, suspect that the 15 km² fires will probably burn on for another 100 to 200 years. (According to the English wikipedia 1.6 km², 400 acres and about 250 years of fire.) Although the quality of the air isn't worse than that of Lancaster, a place further away, the residents were asked to relocate. The last residents though have "permission to stay in their homes for as long as they live", as can be read on wikipedia.

Centralia has its own homepage, among pages is an article Weird Centralia, which discusses just how weird or not, the town actually is. Check it out! There are also some funny pictures of people taken in cracks on the street with smokes coming from the cracks.

Until next blog,
sarah