Centralia Slips Toward Ghost Town as Underground Mine Fire Still Rages
The Pennsylvania borough of Centralia was once home to roughly 1,200 people. By 2025, the U.S. Census counted just four residents, even as an underground mine fire continued to burn beneath the streets. The disaster has made Centralia one of the clearest examples in the United States of how long the damage from fossil fuels can endure, as AS USA has reported.
The fire began in May 1962. The most widely accepted explanation is that a trash fire at the town dump spread into abandoned mine workings beneath the town that had not been sealed. More than six decades later, it still has not been extinguished.
Coal jobs were already disappearing in the region, so the fire intensified an economic decline that was underway. Jon Guss, writing for the Pennsylvania Center for the Book in 2007, described it as "a sudden and dramatic disaster piled onto the advancing economic disaster throughout the region."
The long-burning blaze made the area hazardous, causing sinkholes, toxic gases, and unstable ground. The danger drew national attention in 1981 after 12-year-old Todd Dombowski nearly died when a sinkhole opened in his grandmother's yard. "It was awful scary," Dombowski recalled to The New York Times. "I just grabbed some roots and hung there; the smoke was so thick I couldn't see anything."
The fire is not believed to threaten other nearby towns, though it also forced the relocation of Byrnesville and Germantown. Some estimates suggest it could continue burning for another 100 years, while others place the timeline closer to 250 years.
Congress approved a $42 million relocation effort for Centralia residents after the 1981 sinkhole incident. Authorities later condemned and demolished many buildings, dramatically shrinking the town's footprint and reducing the number of people exposed to the danger. Centralia lost its ZIP code in 2002, and after a lengthy legal battle, a small group was allowed to stay for the rest of their lives.
"Sulfurous steam billows out of hundreds of fissures and holes in the mud," Smithsonian Magazine writer Kevin Krajick wrote of the altered landscape.
Coal extraction can leave behind hazardous abandoned mines and polluted land, while coal- and natural gas-fired power plants contribute to air and water pollution linked to asthma, heart disease, cancer, and premature death. These fuels can also keep home energy costs elevated when families remain dependent on volatile fuel markets rather than more abundant, lower-cost energy sources such as sunlight and wind.
Industry lobbying has also slowed the transition to cleaner, cheaper energy in many places, delaying solutions that could better protect communities and lower utility bills.
Pennsylvania has continued to document the ongoing danger through its Abandoned Mine Land Program, but the state has been direct about the limits of a full fix. "Most experts believe that with a very large and very expensive effort the Centralia Mine Fire could be excavated or otherwise extinguished," the Commonwealth said. Instead, the practical response has focused on keeping people away from the most dangerous areas and preventing a public safety crisis.
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