Centralia Mine Fire
Since 1962, a fire has burned beneath the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. The underground inferno forced evacuation of almost all residents, created a landscape of cracked roads and venting smoke, and could burn for 250 more years. The ghost town inspired the horror film 'Silent Hill.'
Centralia, Pennsylvania was once a thriving coal town of 2,000 people. Today, nearly everyone is gone. The streets are empty, overgrown, and cracked. Steam and smoke vent from fissures in the ground. And beneath the surface, a fire has been burning for over sixty years - a fire that cannot be extinguished and may burn for centuries more.
The Fire Begins
In May 1962, the Centralia Borough Council hired five members of the local volunteer fire company to clean up the town landfill in an abandoned strip mine pit. As was common practice, they set fire to the trash.
What they didn’t know - or didn’t properly consider - was that the landfill had broken through to abandoned coal mines beneath. The fire spread from the trash into the coal seams. Within days, the underground blaze was out of control.
Early attempts to extinguish the fire failed. Water and fly ash were poured into boreholes, but the fire simply spread to new seams. By the time officials realized the scope of the problem, the fire had spread beneath most of the town.
A Town Burning
The fire advanced through the maze of tunnels and coal seams beneath Centralia at roughly 75 feet per year. As it progressed:
- Ground temperatures rose to dangerous levels in some areas
- Toxic gases including carbon monoxide vented into basements and through cracks
- Sinkholes opened suddenly as burning coal collapsed
- Steam and smoke rose from fissures in the earth
In 1979, a gas station owner discovered that fuel in his underground tanks had reached 172°F. In 1981, a twelve-year-old boy fell into a sudden sinkhole that opened beneath him, plunging into a cavity four feet wide and 150 feet deep, filled with hot steam and carbon monoxide. He was saved only because his cousin grabbed him.
These incidents finally prompted action. In 1984, Congress allocated $42 million for relocation. Most residents took buyouts and left. By 1992, Centralia’s 500 remaining buildings were condemned.
The Ghost Town
Today, Centralia is almost empty. The ZIP code has been revoked. The few remaining streets have been removed from maps. Pennsylvania Route 61 through town was permanently closed after the road buckled and collapsed.
What remains is an eerie landscape:
- Empty lots where houses once stood, marked only by occasional steps leading to nothing
- The abandoned Route 61, now called “Graffiti Highway,” covered in artwork from visitors (though recently buried to discourage tourists)
- Vents of smoke and steam rising from cracks in the ground
- An Orthodox cemetery, one of the few maintained areas, which holds a mass grave for unknown victims of the 1918 flu pandemic
A handful of elderly residents refused relocation and remain, their homes surrounded by nothing. The state has allowed them to stay but will not permit the property to be inherited.
The Fire Today
The fire continues to burn beneath approximately 400 acres. The coal seam extends over 3,700 acres and reaches depths of 300 feet. At current burn rates, the fire could continue for 250 years or more.
Periodic assessment has concluded that extinguishing the fire is economically unfeasible. Estimates for complete excavation exceed $660 million. The fire will be allowed to burn until it exhausts its fuel or reaches natural barriers.
Silent Hill
Centralia’s apocalyptic landscape inspired the horror video game and film “Silent Hill,” which features a town abandoned due to underground fire, where ash falls like snow and nightmarish creatures emerge from the mist.
The real Centralia is less supernatural but no less unsettling - a place where the ground itself is on fire, where smoke rises from hell below, where a once-thriving community has been reduced to a handful of holdouts waiting for the end.