Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Centralia Coal Fire

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

An old coal mine in Pennsylvania caught fire one day in the 60s and it’s been burning ever since. What’s crazy is this happens all the time. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, we're Josh, we're Chuck. Doesn't matter.

And this is stuff you should know. This is short stuff. Yeah, short stuff you should know. Man, my mind, Chuck. You all right? No. Okay, let's continue. Okay.

We're talking about Centralia. Yeah, which we've talked about before. I don't know if it was in an Abandoned Places episode, or- I think that. I don't remember what else we would have talked about it in, but we have definitely talked about it. Yeah, unless we talked about coal maybe, but that's the Venn diagram of Abandoned Places

and coal sits Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right. The very smallest municipality in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That's right. And it is a former mining community, a couple of hours northwest of Philly, that it was always a small town, a small mining town.

I think it only had about 1,400 people there in the early 1960s, but now there are less than 10 people for one very scary reason. And what is that? Well, the scary reason is that when you're walking around Centralia, the earth may open up and swallow you

into a fiery pit at any given moment without any warning. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Thank you. Yeah, so what's what happened? Well, we don't know exactly what happened. There's a few different versions of this story that we'll go over in a second, but the end result of each of these stories

is that in 1962, there is still burning from that year a coal seam fire, literally coal on fire, underground, under Centralia and the surrounding area of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Right, which is, I mean, that's a very alarming thing because I think any person who hears that says, well, how would you put one of those out? And the answer to that is by the time it's been burning

for 70 years, you don't, it burns itself out. And then an average reasonable person would be like, well, there's a lot of coal underground. Can it just keep burning indefinitely? And the answer to that reasonable person is absolutely. So these seams are naturally occurring coal deposits. They're called seams in the industry. They're sort of like veins that run through the earth

that are made of coal and they can, it's not like this is a rare thing. Coal seam fires happen a lot and can happen and do happen all over the world. I had no idea. I mean, I've known about Centralia's fire for many, many years, but I had no idea that this was a very common thing.

It's very alarming, really. Centralia. What did I say? You said Centralia and you don't want to anger those 10 people. Oh, it's like saying Nevada, which way do they not like it? Which way do they not like it? They say only people in Nevada call it Nevada.

Okay, yeah, everybody else calls it Nevada. Really makes them mad. Right. I don't want to do that to the people, the good people of Centralia, all 10 of them. So I'm just going to call it Seatown and to cover my bases. Yeah, okay.

Because now if I just spend time thinking about it, it'll just totally derail this whole episode. Let's go back to coal seam fires. Okay, so they're very common, like you said. Apparently in China, something like, well, there's a 3,000 mile stretch of a coal mining belt around China. And I guess at any given time,

a pretty decent proportion of it is on fire with these coal seam fires, which is problematic. There's a town in India called Jiharia and it has had a coal seam fire going on since 1918 and has lost something like 41 million tons of coal to this fire, just up in smoke quite literally. Yeah. Obviously this happens more often

if the miners didn't do the right thing when they left. So like they're down there mining and they've got these tunnels and you got to take care of that stuff when you leave. You can't just say, all right, we're out of here and put the gone fishing sign out front. Well, unfortunately a lot of mine owners have done that for a very long time.

Yeah, absolutely. So if you don't have like the right supports to keep the ground from collapsing, that can be a fire risk as well. Yeah, I saw. So you gotta fill them in. I saw also Chuck that there's this company that developed what they call a cellular foam.

It's actually a mixture of Portland cement and fly ash, which is a very difficult waste to get rid of and some other stuff. And it's a foam you can spray on whatever coals left over. And it will prevent these fires from catching, which is a really great thing. And also it gets rid of, like I said,

that fly ash waste that's tough to remediate on its own. So you're killing two birds with one stone. But one of the reasons that you would want to seal off whatever coal seam is left after you abandoned the mine is because it's not just dipstick humans who set coal seam fires. Like they can happen quite naturally too. And then, because that's a very tantalizing thing to say,

I suggest Chuck that we take an ab break right now. All right, let's do it. ["Stuff Nation"] ["Stuff Nation"] On the podcast, pay dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

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Now's the payoff, everybody. Cold seam fires can start under natural circumstances. Go Chuck. Yeah, they are, they can even spontaneously combust. And once they get going, especially this anthracite coal, it is very, very hard to put out. Produces a lot of heat, and that, that's self-heated. It just sort of is a cyclical thing.

It just sort of stays on fire. And that's why when you're shipping coal, it's, you know, it's dangerous to ship coal. When they get on those big steamer ships, it's dangerous. Yeah, because the, the, as the coal oxidizes, I think pyrite, pyrite, inside the coal, as it oxidizes, it starts to heat up. So the coal can heat up from inside out,

and it can get hot enough that it can actually self-ignite, spontaneously combust, like you were saying. So imagine having like a tanker ship full of coal, and you're a sailor on that ship, and you are fully aware that coal can spontaneously ignite. Wouldn't you be nervous? That'd be a little nerve-wracking. Especially because, so you know that,

that ship is on fire in San Diego, the Navy ship right now, right? Yeah. And they were saying that it's reaching temperatures of about a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and it was melting steel. It was that hot. Well, friend, the coal seemed fire in Centralia.

Did I say it right? Centralia. Man, it has been shown to reach at least temperatures of 1,350 degrees, which is something like 732 degrees Celsius. So if that happened on your ship, it would definitely burn a hole right through your ship, and you would be sunk down to Davy Jones Locker.

Yeah, so how this thing started, there were a few different versions. My money is on probably the most popular version, which was on May 27th, 1962, they burned a landfill on purpose. This was something that, you know, would happen regularly is you would burn the trash, literally, and that this trash burn

kind of got into that coal seam, and boom, there you have it. And it started a fire that has never been put out to this day. Other versions of the story was that it was another garbage fire, and not that one on May 27th, lit by a truck driver.

And then another one is that it started in the 1930s, I think, and has just been around, and then in the 1960s, it was kind of noticed for the first time. Yeah, I like that one myself. Oh yeah? Yeah, the idea that it was kind of smoldering, and then all of a sudden, you know?

Maybe a flapper through their cigarette. I could totally see that, sure. That might be sexist though, so let's just say it could have been a flapper or a boy toy. Okay. Either way though, that thing caught on fire, started sweeping through those tunnels.

We're talking 100 to 300 feet down below the earth is still on fire. You can still see it today. There's some cool little short version YouTube documentaries where news crews have gone out and stuff about Centralia. And on rainy days, you just, you stand there, especially on rainy days, and you just see

that steam and smoke coming out from the earth itself. Yeah, which is one reason why I gave rise to the video game and then later on the movie Silent Hill. It's just this creepy abandoned town. Although the astounding thing is that it's not fully abandoned. Like you said, there are some people there still. I think there's 10 people that live there still.

And they live there because they basically said, I'm not moving. And so the government of Pennsylvania finally said, fine. You guys, you lifelong residents, of original residents of Centralia, you can stay here until you die. Centralia. And what'd you say in chill?

I said, Centralia. In, whatever. You said, Centralia again. I don't care. I don't care anymore. I'm sorry. I'm sorry people of Seatown. I'm mispronouncing your name.

I'm offending 10 people right now. Well, the government tried to get them out of there. They took away their zip code in 2002. They were like, sorry, no zip code. I don't know if they were like, they need that for somewhere else or we're just retiring it. It's quite a burn though.

Oh, a big burn. No pun intended. They took away Route 61 or part of it, at least, it ran through there. And some people say it's closed for other. Other people say like it could reopen again one day. I don't think it will. No, who says it could reopen one day?

That's ridiculous. And one of those documentaries like, you know, the idea was if this thing gets under control, they could rebuild the road and get traffic going. No, Centralia is toast. One reason why they decided to move everybody out of there and it was done with a taxpayer funded, basically like moving fund.

Everyone is giving up hope. Well, the reason why they started moving everybody, I think in the early 80s, some kid was playing in one of the streets and the street just collapsed under him. And he was hanging by his fingers above this like burning pit that he was about to drop into. And they're like, okay,

I don't think Centralia is safe to live in. That was 40 years ago. So the town's done nothing but get more unstable since then. So at the very least that highway is not opening back up. They've also demolished like 500 buildings there too. You know what actually happened to that kid? What?

In 1982 is he went to investigate some smoke and the thing exploded and shot him 50 feet up into the air. I think it was a different kid. Was it? I don't know. I don't like the idea that I got something wrong though. And it just so happened to be on the same day that a bunch of news crews and local politicians were there.

And that was not a good look at all. No, for sure. The kid lived by the way. Great. Well, the kid lived in my version too. Yeah. That's good. So that's good.

They've tried a bunch of things over the years to extinguish it. They put vent pipes in in the 80s. And the idea there was not to put out the fire but to direct these noxious gases because there's all kinds of nasty stuff being put into the air. To vent those at least away from the town.

And some people said that's not working. And in fact, it's feeding the fire with oxygen so they seal them up. Right. So where does that leave us, Chuck? Well, they've also tried to put it out all together. In 1969, they dug sort of like a fire break. They dug a trench down to try and reach that seam

in front of the fire, but the fire went so fast they didn't go far enough ahead. It beat them to where they were digging down and they just went nuts. Right. But apparently that's like, that's kind of par for the course. Like they're just really tough to put out.

You can kind of understand how that would be the case. From what I've read, you have to stay on top of it immediately after you notice this and then continue monitoring it basically indefinitely because it can just keep flaring up. And in fact, there's something called burning mountain, Mount Wingen or Wingen in New South Wales, Australia they think has been burning for 6,000 years now.

Really? Yeah, really. Man. Well, that's scary stuff. I think so too. But that was a good one, don't you think? I think it was great. Well, we hope that you think the same thing too.

And since we've run out of stuff to talk about, about Centralia, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.