Author: Trisha Leigh Zeigenhorn / Source: did you know?
In 1962, Centralia, Pennsylvania’s council met to discuss the new landfill that was getting too full and needed to be cleared by the town’s Memorial Day celebration. A proposal to burn out the 300-foot-wide, 75-foot-long, 50-foot-deep pit passed with no serious opposition.
The council members could not have foreseen the ball they set rolling – one that seemed to solve one problem, but one that ignited a fire that ultimately couldn’t be stopped.
The pit had been lined with incombustible material that confined the fire, and after the contents had been reduced to ash, water was used to douse what remained of the flames. Problem solved, right?
Wrong.
Two days later, flames were seen again and then again a week after that. Firefighters couldn’t figure it out until they discovered a hole in the base of the pit. It was 15-feet-wide and several feet deep and, since it had been concealed by waste, was never filled with the incombustible materials used to contain the fire.
The hole let the fire out of the pit and into the labyrinth of coal mines atop which Centralia was built.
At this point, residents began to notice something was amiss. Foul odors entered their homes and businesses and smoke began to rise from the ground around the landfill.
A mine…
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