There is a fire burning in the heart of Pennsylvania. That's not a metaphor about a town of hardworking people. It's a literal fire, the kind that has been known to attack the pants of liars. The fire has taken up residence in the small town of Centralia. The name may sound strange and made up but it's really no different than Australia only with Centra's replacing the Austra's. I'm not sure what an Austra is but a Centra is a misspelled version of a car from Nissan. I doubt you'd find any in Centralia though.

I've never been there but I'd like to imagine a large sign on the outskirts of town welcoming me to Centralia. Underneath would be a smaller sign with displaying the current population, which over the years has been marked out again and again and now reads 18. There isn't a missing zero. The town's population is a meager eighteen souls. Where did everyone else go? They left. Fire doesn't make the friendliest neighbor.

You would think a fire that almost managed to wipe out an entire town would get national news coverage. If the destruction happened over a shorter time frame it might have, but the fire is older than I am. In fact it just celebrated its 44th birthday this year.

The year was 1962. The town's dump was located in an abandoned strip mine next to Odd Fellows Cemetery. In preparation of the upcoming holiday when a lot of the residents visited the gravesites, the trash was set on fire in order to suppress the stench. The fire was put out and a fresh load of dirt was spread on the ashes. Since I've already given away the ending of the story you can probably guess that the fire wasn't really out. But what problems can smoldering ashes under a layer of dirt cause?

Centralia had been a coal mining town at one point in its history but the tunnels has been long abandoned by the 60's. A few had been exposed by the strip mine which was now the home of the town's dump, but the exposed tunnels were to be filled up incombustible material before the mine could be used as a trash hole. Most were. But one wasn't. The fire found it's way into the tunnels and more importantly the remaining coal.

Many different plans were tried but nothing was able to stop the fire. By the 80's most of the residents had been relocated in order to avoid deadly gas that was seeping into their homes. The abandoned buildings were torn down but a few still remain. The small town becomes even smaller and the fire still burns.

cravipat escaped the blue labyrinth long enough to write this.

0 adventurers found their way to the golden castle.

Words uncovered in the catacombs : places