American town burned for 5 decades

Research shows that the small town of Centralia in Pennsylvania, USA, will continue to burn for the next 250 years.

The fire in the town of Centralia has been burning for the past 50 years. Photo: Hypescience.

According to Business Insider, the town of Centralia began burning in 1962. How the fire started remains a mystery, but scientists may be able to explain why the fire continues to burn.

Centralia sits atop some of the world’s largest coal mines, a lucky find for the town in the 19th century, as coal was one of the main energy sources that fueled the Industrial Revolution.

In the 1800s, miners in Centralia blasted underground tunnels to extract coal, but by the mid-20th century, many of the mines were abandoned. No one knows exactly how the Centralia fire started, but the leading theory is that burning trash at a nearby landfill accidentally ignited coal beneath the mine entrance. The fire then spread through the tunnels.

Coal forms over millions of years when swamps filled with organic matter such as trees, roots, and bacteria are buried under sand, mud, and other natural materials. Pressure on the organic matter increases as the top layer of soil thickens over time, while all the water and compounds from the buried plants and trees dry out, creating coal, which is mostly carbon. Carbon makes up about 40-90% of coal by weight.

Centralia is at the arrowhead on Google Map. Photo: Google Map.

When the carbon inside coal comes into contact with oxygen, it ignites. In fact, it does so instantly, without the need for another fire nearby. Tunnels dug by miners in the 19th century help keep the fire going by sucking oxygen from the ground. As more coal burns, the fire digs deeper into the surrounding area, reaching a maximum depth of 91 meters.

Coal burns slowly and steadily, meaning it takes a long time to burn out. As long as there is enough heat, fuel, and oxygen to keep it burning, the fire will not go out. That is why coal mine fires can burn fiercely for decades.

Today, the Centralia fire covers 6 square miles and is growing 75 feet per year. Researchers predict it could continue to burn for another 250 years. The roughly 1,000 residents who lived in Centralia when the fire first started initially thought it was just a minor inconvenience. But their minds changed when sulfur fumes and carbon monoxide began to seep out of the mine shafts, nearly suffocating residents. The underground fire also caused cracks in the ground, leading to sinkholes popping up everywhere.

The town authorities tried in vain to extinguish the fire for years. They drilled holes into the mine shafts and filled them with sand to block the air supply, but this did not work. They were forced to stop in the 1980s.

The state closed Centralia in 1992 and most of the residents left. Today, only a dozen people live there. The town has become a graffiti hotspot for independent artists. While these long-term underground fires may seem strange, they are actually quite common, having been reported in New Zealand, India, China and Turkmenistan.

According to VNE