A Brief History of: The Centralia Mine Fire (Short Documentary)

imagine a whole town evacuated due to an uncontrolled underground fire well imagine no more as in pennsylvania usa such a place actually exists today we'll talk about centralia or more to the point the 1962 centralia minefire and its effects on the community who lived above it [Music] thank you to my patrons for voting for this one it is a slight bit different from a usual plain difficult subject however it is still a disaster in its own right i'm going to rate this video here on the patented plainly difficult disaster scale here's a brief history of the town of centralia for some context centralia is located in columbia county in the us state of pennsylvania which is around here on a map our story starts off for the princely sum of 500 pounds which was the combined cost of settlers buying the land that would make up centralia from native americans in 1749 unknown to the purchasers at the time but the land would prove to have great value as it sat atop a large coal deposit in the late 1700s the coal beneath was discovered however it wouldn't be for another 50 to 60 years that the deposits would be exploited in 1832 jonathan faust credited as the town's founder opened the bull's head tavern naming the new settlement bull's head talk about effective branding in 1842 centralia's land was bought by the locust coal and iron company and sent alexandra ray a mining engineer to design and build a small town to accommodate the miners rey named the town centerville however the post office refused this name and instead centralia was penned to the small town business started to boom after the mine run railroad and first town mines opened in 1854 and 1856 respectively as a strange side note alexandra ray was murdered in 1868 during a period of robbery and homicide that engulfed the region a record high population of 2761 was recorded in 1890 this would be the peak of the settlement inhabitants after several rights purchases and two world wars the population had sunk to 1986 people by 1950. an interesting and detrimental bootleg industry had developed since the financial crash of 1929 and this was the act of pillar robbing you see a pillar is a column of unmined ore used to support the roof of mine or is dug out in a grid formation leaving pillars kind of how a city street system is formed this method is called room and pillar mining needs to say bootleg mining is really dangerous as it compromises the structural integrity of the mine and can and does cause collapses which make navigation of the mine system difficult remember this for later on this leads us on to 1962 and the town of centralia had an illegal dumping problem this was due to the main landfill site being close to the public a disused surface strip mine that had been cleared in the 1930s had been used as one such illegal dump and the council set about clearing it up although it's not known for certain most theories point to the start of the fire being linked to the clearing works of the strip mine the local council hired a number of firemen to clear up the dump and this involved burning the rubbish even though this was against state legislation this material was covering up a hole 15 feet wide and several feet high in the base of the north wall of the pit the fire was started on the 27th of may 1962 and was doused with fire hoses after the material burned away quelling the visible flames two days after the initial rubbish burning the flames returned once again the hoses were used to douse the smoldering a week later fire again was spotted and a bulldozer was called up to remove some layers of waste to try and find the source of the burning this was when a hole leading to the maze of underground mines at centralia was discovered and it was believed that this was a fuse that lit the disaster that was the centralia mine fire on the 2nd of july complaints began to come into the council of foul odors coming from the area of the dump clarence kashner the head of the independent mines breaker men and truckers union was called in to offer some advice on how to deal with the fire problem kashner suggested contacting gordon smith an engineer of the department of mines and mineral industries to see what could be done upon evaluating the strip mines smith suggested excavating as much of the burning rubbish as possible to prevent any more ignition of the coal seam the price of 175 dollars had to be authorized causing delays to the time critical situation thus kicking the cost into the proverbial long grass little did the council know but the fire spread into the coal seams inside the abandoned mines creating an uncontrollable inferno beneath the town's streets this was exasperated by collapsed mines from illegal pillar mining leading to difficulties tracking the route of the fire tests using gas detection equipment concluded that the large hole in the pit wall and from the cracks in the north wall contained carbon monoxide concentrations hinting at a disastrous coal mine fire believe ali coal company was notified of the fire although its true cause was withheld by the council instead stating the source to be of unknown origin during a period of unusually hot weather a meeting on the 6th of august was set up at the strip mine with the lvcc and sesquihana coal company to estimate the cost of digging out the fire by now the financial burden was estimated to be near 30 000 175 back in july sounded like a bargain to add some toxic cherries to the dumpster fire cake on the 9th of august deadly levels of carbon monoxide were detected closing all centralia area mines the contract to clear the fire was put out to tender and on the 17th was awarded to briti inc the company would end up excavating 53 000 cubic yards expending just over 27 thousand dollars pretty inc would cease excavation works on the 29th of october after discovering the fire had spread beyond the area this would necessitate more serious works such as drilling and flushing raising the cost significantly a new project to stop the fire was set out and would involve flushing by mixing water and crushed rock into holes drilled ahead of the predicted path of the fire and this was to fill voids and reduce oxygen the new project was estimated to cost forty thousand dollars and on the 19th of november k and h excavating began drilling some 80 boreholes this would last until march 1963 when the money ran out after 43 000 was spent not to talk surprisingly the fire was not contained by may 1963 the fire had spread approximately 700 feet eastward and the fire had heated up as seen by steam plumes emanating from the ground free plans were drawn up and submitted to the secretary of mines and mineral industries option one costing 296 000 consisted of entrenching the fire and backfilling the trench with incombustible material such as clay option two costing roughly 151 thousand dollars offered a smaller trench in an incomplete circle followed by extensive flushing option three was to drill more bore holes for flushing and would cost around 82 000 however without proper funding the projects were all abandoned instead opting to dig a cheaper trench however by october the fire was discovered on either side of the incomplete attempt costing in excess of thirty two thousand dollars in total the council has spent over a hundred thousand dollars with no effective control of fire essentially dooming the fate of centralia work would not restart until november 1966 when federal state funding was secured and after a year spending another 326 thousand dollars it was again discovered that the fire had spread seven more projects would be undertaken in 1970 1973 and 1980 including flashing injecting fly ash and the digging of containment trenches all of which would not effectively control the fire the ground beneath the town itself increased in heat reaching over 900 degrees fahrenheit smoke poured from sinkholes and filled basements with gas necessitating evacuation of residents due to oxygen deficiencies and heightened levels of carbon monoxide increased reports of health issues plagued the residents with heightened respiratory complications locals became aware of the severity of the fire when the roads began to bulge and sinkholes appeared residents were divided between staying and abandoning the town in 1982 the us congress allocated 42 million dollars for the relocation of centralia's inhabitants unsurprisingly many took the money and ran as essentially the property was now worthless in total a thousand people moved out of the town and 500 buildings were raised to the ground leaving behind around 63 residents many buildings foundations became unstable as the fire burned away creating voids beneath the town meaning demolition was the only route left pennsylvania governor bob casey invoked eminent domain on the town in 1992 condemning any remaining structures the town was now all but gone except for a handful of steadfast residents builder refused any rights the order refused the rights of any resident to hand down or sell their property by 2003 the u.s postal service revoked the town zip code and after 2009 evictions cleared out most of who remained however centralia today still exists with a population of five after 20 years of battling over eminent domain in 2013 the remaining residents were allowed to stay and part of the settlement gave a grand sum of 349 thousand five hundred dollars to the eight litigants the town still receives a large amount of vistas in a strange form of abandoned exploration and the main attraction of sorts being the graffiti highway which was once part of pa route 61. have is now has been covered up with dirt to deter visitors during the covid pandemic the fire is predicted to burn for at least another century as the seams of coal in the region act as a limitless source of fuel i hope you enjoyed the video if you'd like to support the channel financially you can on patreon from one dollar per creation and that gets you early access to videos and access to votes i have a youtube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that gets you early access to videos check me out on twitter and also if you'd like to wear my merch you can purchase it at my teespring store and all it's left to say is thank you for watching

Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 761,747

Keywords: Atomic, Nuclear History, Education, Plainly Difficult, dark docs, History, USA, Centralia Mine fire, coal-seam fire, Centralia landfill, Lehigh Valley Coal Company, abandoned town, qxir, weird history, industrial disaster, history documentary

Id: kjWM0wJHVTY

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020