We are talking about Centralia, a city in the Pennsylvania province of the United States Of America. A fire has broken out in its coal mines due to a mistake and that has cost the city to become a ghost town. In 1962, the city was preparing for the memorial day celebration when the fire started to spread.
Before the memorial day, all the trash of the city was to be burnt in a huge landfill. Happened exactly the same and people gathered trash in the landfill but the fire mistakenly spread to the coal mine of the city. Centralia was built on a large network of coal mines that was around 700 feet deep and spread across thousands of acres, due to which the fire broke out rapidly. People tried to stop the fire spread, but eventually they were unsuccessful and the fire ended up causing the city to be filled with poisonous carbon monoxide gas.
The government, along with the Susquehanna Coal Company, made numerous efforts to extinguish the fire. Initially, they decided to dig pits to allow the fire to surface and be extinguished, but this approach required extensive digging, which was hindered by a lack of funds. A second plan involved filling the pits with water and small stones to smother the fire, but the low temperatures caused the water to freeze. By 1983, the Pennsylvania administration had spent 58 crore rupees attempting to extinguish the fire, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
People started facing the consequences of burning fire and poisonous gases emission. Due to the continuous smoke, people started fainting in their homes. Trees and plants around started drying up along with the dying animals. By the year 1980, the population of the city remained around thousand. However, some people resisted to move out and remained there. In 1983, the federal government paid Rs 350 crore to buy Centralia and after that started relocating people from there and demolishing the buildings. Many started a legal battle with the government. By 1993, there were only 63 people left and by 2013, less than 10. Now the city has become completely deserted. It is believed that there is so much coal under the city that it will keep burning for the next 250 years