In 1962, a routine trash-burning near in an abandoned strip mine triggered a decades-long underground inferno that continues to burn beneath Centralia, Pennsylvania.
A 1982 PBS documentary on the Centralia Mine Fire, now published on YouTube, offered an in-depth exploration of this environmental disaster and its profound impact on a once-thriving anthracite coal community in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region.
As the fire spread through old mining tunnels beneath the town, toxic gases seeped from the ground, forcing families to evacuate and leaving behind a literal ghost town. At its peak, Centralia boasted more than 2,700 residents; the 2020 census recorded 5 people living in Centralia.
The PBS documentary captured the fierce debate over the fate of the town and how to stop a seemingly unquenchable blaze. It also captured a moment in time in the years before major efforts began to relocate the doomed town’s residents.
A walk through Centralia today presents a maze of empty streetscapes; the Centralia we see in the documentary is a place that still buzzes with community that in just a few short years would be gone forever.
Let us know what you think about this piece of history in the comments below!
Read more about the Centralia Mine Fire
An August 1962 report warned of escalating disaster in Centralia
Viewing Centralia and its ongoing mine fire as a historic site
Read David Dekok’s book, Fire Underground
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Dear Jake:
Thank you for sharing that documentary. What a sad story. I remember driving through Centralia after most people had left. I felt the desolation of the town and felt sadness for the people of the community.
We now know, of course, of the devastation that mining has wreaked upon our environment throughout the ages.
My family had roots in the mining town of Girardville. I feel great affinity for the struggles of those miners and their families. Like many of their period and like many after, they left S. County for the big city of Philadelphia. Still, I have an attachment to S. County despite the fact that I never lived there.
Thank you again for this documentary and all of your posts.
Barbara Fahy
A terrible part of the coal region history.