#mine fire

[wtf-fun-factss]

A fire has been burning in Pennsylvania for over 60 years. Click to read the full fact.

[jtownraindancer]

History has shown that it is not whether a disaster will strike a town, but when. If it is not a mine fire, it is living in the shadow of Three Mile Island. Or in a community with a tainted water supply. Or the ghastly horror of Bhopal.

Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania by Renée Jacobs, 1986.

[mcgravin]

You've probably heard of the Centralia, PA coal fire, a fire burning through the coal seam beneath the now-abandoned ghost town of Centralia for the past 62 years. It's one of those neat facts that floats around the internet. Here's a favorite Youtube video on it from Jeffiot, and another (slightly more serious) documentary from someone who went there to see the town from himself.

But while Centralia has been covered plenty by the media including PRX's 99% Invisible podcast, it's not the persistent only mine fire. There are at least two others in Pennsylvania, one still burning like Centralia and one that appears to be extinguished, as well as plenty of them around the world like Burning Mountain, Australia and Smoking Hills, NWT, Canada. But I just learned one that has been called the "World's Greatest Mine Fire", and I agree for several reasons.

First, I must admit a personal bias. The fire is under New Straitsville, Ohio, a small village of fewer than 700 residents in the foothills of Appalachia not far from where I went to college. I'm very fond of the area.

Second, it's been burning for for more than twice as long as Centralia, and longer than any other coal fire in the United States (as far as I can tell). Centralia started in 1962, while the fire under New Straitsville started in 1884, 140 years ago. There are older fires, though; Brennender Berg ("Burning Mountain") in Germany started around 1688, from a fire set by a shepherd according to legend, while Burning Mountain, Australia may have been natural combustion... 5500 to 6000 years ago!

Third, while Centralia is a sometimes-curiosity that was largely unknown outside the town itself for decades, the New Straitsville fire was a bit of a sensation in its day. Locals would amuse sightseers by brewing coffee with hot water drawn directly from their well. Tour guides would charge 25¢ to fry an egg in a pan over the fire holes, or to bake a potato by just burying it in the hot soil over the mine. At some points, the flames would jet out of the mine entrances up to 100 feet in the air and could be seen from five miles away. In the winter, snow would melt from the ground over the mine, and rosebushes would bloom. It was still burning in 1938 when the Works Progress Administration hired scores of unemployed workers to try (and fail) to contain the fire with walls of clay and stone brick.

And finally, there's the cause of the New Straitsville fire. The Centralia fire was started when the town attempted to clean up a garbage dump by burning the mine waste that was piled up there, and despite thinking they had extinguished the fire, it continued to smolder and spread underground. Other fires I've read about were also started accidentally, like the Laurel Run fire that was started when a miner left a burning carbide lamp hanging under a wooden beam when everyone went home for the weekend. But the New Straitsville fire started during the Hocking Valley Coal Strike, when the Columbus & Hocking Coal and Iron Company hired scab miners to try to break the strike, so the strikers responded by sending a burning mine cars into six (or seven) mine entrances, igniting the coal.

That's the lasting effect of organized labor.

— New Straitsville, Ohio

— "World's Greatest Mine Fire", Historical Marker Database

— "Remember When: The World’s Largest Coal Mine Fire, 1938", Lancaster Eagle Gazette

— "Great Hocking Valley Coal Strike of 1884-1885", Ohio History Connection

[mmmutualcore]

[whitewingedcrow]

WILDFIRE CLASS: CENTRALIA GHOST Risk Assessment Score 4: Aggressive to human presence and may create highly hazardous conditions in proximity. Avoid at all costs or destroy if possible.

This area-specific ghost spawned from the burning coal veins under the American town of Centralia, and seems to be a unique specimen. It burrows through the mountainous terrain of the area, spending most of its time underground; however, it seems capable of perceiving human presence on the surface and will burst forth to attack intruders. It poses significant danger from sheer size, the blistering, radiating heat it produces, and a constant discharge of noxious gases. Though the Centralia Ghost appears to be reluctant to venture far from the underlying network of coal veins in the proximity of the town, thus making it easy to avoid, it’s been theorized that more of these ghosts may exist in other areas of persistent subterranean coal fire. (description edited and expanded by @medikalemergency)

[toomeirl-blog]

just gonna stand there and watch me burn

[parttimereporter]

AI reimagines Centralia PA as though a mine fire never happened

[parttimereporter]

News on the famed Centralia mine fire--it has been a while since anyone focused on the historic location, at least since the graffiti highway was shut down in 2020..

Now a PA news station is trying to figure out just where the mine fire is and where it is going next..

Burning Coal Country: Schuylkill man who lives near underground fire speaks out

"I do believe that that mine fire will catch us at some interval."

The closest neighborhood to the Girardville Fire in Schuylkill County is called Raven Run. Fewer than 10 homes are located there, but all of them are only about a mile from the site of the fire. One man who lives there, Victor Mearini, said he's hiked into the hills before, but we were the first to inform him of the fire not far from his front door.