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Centralia is a borough and near-ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population has declined from 1,000 in 1980 to 4 residents in 2020 because a coal mine fire has been burning beneath the borough since 1962. Centralia, part of the Bloomsburg–Berwick metropolitan area, is the least-populated municipality in Pennsylvania. It is completely surrounded by Conyngham Township.[1]

Coverage[]

Centralia is featured in Bound and Buried, where an underground disaster caused its demise and abandoned for 25 years. David Dekok guide and explain how Centralia is abandoned and the progress of nature.

History[]

Centraliabeforeabandoned

Centralia before the coal fire.

Centralia was hummed with more than a thousand residents in 1983, and businesses, churches, & a high school anchored the village with Highway 61 being its main street. David Dekok stated that Centralia was just a classic small town where everybody knew each other. However, being located in the heart of Pennsylvania's coal country, Centralia always lived by mining, and its about to die from it. David Dekok stated that Anthracite, also called hard coal, burns very hot and can burn for a long time. 20 years have let a hellish underground fire to burn in a maze of abandoned coal shafts directly ran beneath the town and the deadly gases spread into the homes above the fires, leaving residents little choice but to leave. David Dekok stated that the mine fire created three dangerous gases, all can asphyxiate, and carbon monoxide is feared the most. The federal government bought up hundreds of homes in 1984 beginning the mass exodus with a handful of residents refused to leave.

Exploration[]

Tearing down the structure left behind is the first job by nature in many abandoned towns, but in Centralia, man gave nature a head start and almost all the buildings were demolished with nature left to take over. 25 years after people have let the vines grow over a trailer home, rotting it and inside the debris-strewn floors are chewed by moisture with plastic Christmas ornaments withstood the assault of snow and rain. The stone walls are surrendering to gravity and the empty lots have been consumed by trees, grass, and shrubs, leaving just a few relics of the human past still visible. David Dekok shows the sidewalks and curbs that served a neighborhood at one point but there's nothing left. While the subterranean inferno burned beneath the stretch of the main highway, ominous cracks erupted in the road and forced the state to reroute it. 25 years later, the fire creates a huge fissure in the old highway and sulfurous smoke and steam still rises up with moss grows in the warm vent. Thick trees grow in the middle of the abandoned pavement a hundred yards up to the road. At the last abandoned house in the town, cobwebs and dust cover it and its destruction is imminent, with the basement contains remnants of family's possessions. David Dekok shows an intersection of Locust Avenue and Wood Street where it once filled with houses, and it is an overgrown area with one house remains.

Outskirts of the town, pipes that were thrust into the ground in an attempt to vent the fire's lethal gases lie rusted and overgrown, the iron gates of the cemetery have oxidize over the years, and the wood roof of a warehouse is riddled with rot. While it no longer proves any shelter, the cinderblock walls will stand for several more decades until mortar crumbles and the bricks collapse. The raging fire underground would continue to burn for another 250 years, long after Centralia gone. David Dekok stated that the most enduring part of the story is the power of nature and the resilient of people where they can face off conditions but ultimately nature wins.

Exploration Conclusion[]

CentraliaTimeCapsule

The time capsule.

The exploration concludes with the final legacy of Centralia, in the underground is marked by the engraved stone in what was once the center of the town. A time capsule, buried nearly 50 years ago, it's due to unearthed in 2016 and the contents will be the last mystery before the land return to wilderness.

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