A Pennsylvania Town Has Been on Fire Since 1962

On 27 May 1962, firefighters in Centralia, Pennsylvania, lit a controlled burn at the town's landfill — a routine spring cleanout. They didn't fully put it out. An unsealed opening at the bottom of the pit let the flames find a coal seam, and the seam went into the maze of abandoned mines under the town. It is still burning.

For most of the 1960s and 1970s the fire was a curiosity that occasionally cracked roads and killed gardens. Then on Valentine's Day 1981, the ground opened under 12-year-old Todd Domboski's feet in his grandmother's backyard — a sinkhole 1.2 metres wide and 46 metres deep, full of carbon monoxide hot enough to register on a thermometer. His older cousin pulled him out. The incident put the town on the national news.

Congress allocated more than $42 million in 1984 to relocate residents. Most took the deal. In 1992, Pennsylvania claimed every remaining property under eminent domain. The Postal Service pulled the ZIP code, 17927, in 2002. By 2020, the population was five.

The fire now covers about 3,700 acres and reaches 90 metres down. Engineers studying it have estimated, given how slowly coal burns and how much of the seam remains, that it could continue for another 250 years. Pennsylvania Route 61 had to be re-routed because the original road buckled and steamed; the abandoned section became a tourist attraction known as Graffiti Highway, until the state covered it in dirt in April 2020. The graffiti is gone. The fire is not.