I find the story of Centralia fascinating. I read through the entirety of Unseen Danger https://archive.org/details/unseendangertrag0000deko, marvelling how it went from something that could have been handled easily if there had been funding, to something that killed the entire town with heavy doses of politics along the way.
Mildly related: In North Philadelphia there are a few blocks known as the Logan Triangle that were abandoned once it was discovered that the topsoil was not stable.
I always thought it was an interesting story, drove out there one day many years ago when I lived nearby. It was a dreary day, which added to the strangeness of the place.
It's an interesting place because it's not that far from other towns, and you can drive right through it on a normal, maintained road. If you turn off and drive just a minute or two it's very different though.
"What Flynn makes clear is that while we tend to think of human activity on the landscape as not only damaging but irreversible, this may not always be the case."
so how do you put that fire out? or was "So now, people like Phil assume that the government is just waiting them out. Once they’re gone, putting out the fire will be easy enough" referring to how the locals think the government is just pretending they can't fix the problem?
I like how the guy who is most grounded in how the government and corporations work is being presented as someone who is inexplicably yearning for the a point in history where things were at their bleakest.
With nary a comment about the intention of the company who is now buying up the land.
>Those that stayed had to go to court to defend their right to live on this abandoned land, all because they wanted to keep the mineral rights to their property. So now, people like Phil assume that the government is just waiting them out. Once they’re gone, putting out the fire will be easy enough. “They’ll take all that red hot coals, but also they’re going to get that rich anthracite coal,” he told us. “And I’m sure they’ll sell that. But are the people or the relatives going to get anything? It’s very doubtful. It’ll probably go to the federal government. Or the coal baron, maybe?”
>His voice, I noticed after a while, has a peculiar kind of nostalgia for the worst times in the world.
>so when coal company Pagnotti Enterprises bought the land in 2018
I grew up in Pennsylvania and have visited Centralia a few times over the years. When I was younger, I remember being able to see smoke rise from the ground, but in recent years, I haven’t seen anything almost as if the fire has subsided a bit.
Pennsylvania is filled with old coal mining towns, and most of them are in a state of decay. Towns like Pottsville, Pennsylvania have buildings crumbling down on their main streets.
If anything, I think Centralia is representative of where these other towns could be in 50 to 100 years, assuming people move to larger communities. Barring the fire under the ground, of course.
I was on a road trip a few months back and took a slight detour to pass through centralia, and there was enough smoke that I could see it from the road. Some local had set up a lawn chair and chained it to a tree so passers-by would know where to stop and take a peek
There's some Youtuber who posts videos of driving out to these places and talking to the locals. It's pretty depressing, the closest I've seen to it is isolated towns in immediately post-Soviet eastern Europe, but without the meth problems.
> Pennsylvania is filled with old coal mining towns,
and most of them are in a state of decay. Towns like Pottsville, Pennsylvania have buildings crumbling down on their main streets
And it's been going on long enough that Billy Joel even had a hit song about one over 40 years ago
I visited Centralia about 20 years ago, I remember that we stopped the car on the way into town because there was a crack going all the way across the road with smoke coming out of it. But we kept walking and found a few abandoned houses and empty streets. We were too intimidated by all the scary signs to wander far off the road but took some pictures on a disposable camera and eventually returned home.
i'm sure there are discussions around this but i wonder if there was any feasible way to harness the energy from the underground fires? turn a horrible situation into a semi-temporary "geothermal" generator!
15 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 40.7 ms ] threadhttps://hiddencityphila.org/2022/06/in-limbo-logan-triangle-...
It's an interesting place because it's not that far from other towns, and you can drive right through it on a normal, maintained road. If you turn off and drive just a minute or two it's very different though.
> When Estonia, for example, became independent of the Soviet Union, some 245 million square miles of collectivist farmlands were simply abandoned.
With nary a comment about the intention of the company who is now buying up the land.
>Those that stayed had to go to court to defend their right to live on this abandoned land, all because they wanted to keep the mineral rights to their property. So now, people like Phil assume that the government is just waiting them out. Once they’re gone, putting out the fire will be easy enough. “They’ll take all that red hot coals, but also they’re going to get that rich anthracite coal,” he told us. “And I’m sure they’ll sell that. But are the people or the relatives going to get anything? It’s very doubtful. It’ll probably go to the federal government. Or the coal baron, maybe?”
>His voice, I noticed after a while, has a peculiar kind of nostalgia for the worst times in the world.
>so when coal company Pagnotti Enterprises bought the land in 2018
Pennsylvania is filled with old coal mining towns, and most of them are in a state of decay. Towns like Pottsville, Pennsylvania have buildings crumbling down on their main streets.
If anything, I think Centralia is representative of where these other towns could be in 50 to 100 years, assuming people move to larger communities. Barring the fire under the ground, of course.
And it's been going on long enough that Billy Joel even had a hit song about one over 40 years ago