Centralia, Pa. – Nearly a half-century after it began, the voracious mine fire that doomed this coal town in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania continues to burn hundreds of feet underground, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
The fire began in 1962 at the town dump and ignited an exposed coal vein, eventually forcing an exodus that emptied Centralia of more than 1,000 people, nearly its entire population. Almost every house was demolished; the U.S. Postal Service canceled the town’s ZIP code.
Centralia still beckons curiosity seekers. What they find is a ghost town like no other, a place with an intact street grid but almost nothing on it, where clouds of sulfurous steam waft from a rocky moonscape and the ground is warm to the touch.
About 10 holdouts still live here, ignoring government admonitions to leave. In a way, they are carrying on a tradition of proud defiance that is highlighted in a new book by the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Centralia coal miners.
In “The Day the Earth Caved In,” first-time author Joan Quigley vividly explores why so many of Centralia’s residents fought to stay in a town that was struggling economically even before the fire started, a place with “no stoplight or movie theater, no restaurant or grocery store.” Most Centralians ignored the fire for years, and some denied its very existence, choosing to disregard the threat posed by dangerous gases and cave-ins.
Why? For some, it was a simple matter of economics. Centralians worked low-paying jobs but for the most part owned their homes; they couldn’t afford to move and take on a mortgage. For others, it was a matter of pride. They had lived in Centralia most of their lives, just as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers before them, and couldn’t imagine abandoning it.
Centralians had “scraped for work after the mines closed,” Quigley writes, and “swelled with pride in their homes, their children, and their community.”
The fire could have been put out for thousands of dollars when it first started, Quigley writes, but bureaucratic inertia and bungling conspired to delay an effective response until it was too late.
“The government’s responses were a day late and a dollar short,” Quigley, a former lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission, said in a phone interview. For Centralia, Quigley writes, the beginning of the end came in 1981, when 12-year-old Todd Domboski was swallowed by a subsidence, coating him with hot, sticky muck but otherwise leaving him unhurt.
The incident attracted national media attention to the mine fire and led to the formation of a group of Centralia activists who pressed the government to act.
But a sizable portion of Centralia’s population resented the activists. They were led by Helen Womer, a bank teller who wanted to keep Centralia intact at all costs and who rejected both a proposed government buyout and a proposed trench that would have obliterated her home.
Disagreements over the future of Centralia polarized the town so severely that in 1982 someone heaved a Molotov cocktail through the window of activist Dave Lamb’s motorcycle shop.
Though Centralia’s numbers have dwindled steadily, its residents jealously guard the town’s image and reject the “ghost town” label, however apt.
“I think this town is more beautiful than ever,” said Helen Tanis, 80, who was born and raised in Centralia and lives in a stone-and-siding rancher on Centre Street. Quigley’s great-aunt was Tanis’ first-grade teacher. “There’s a lot of room and we’re safe.”
