CENTRALIA'S EFFECT ON ITS PEOPLE
A sense of trust, a singular, blind trust, bound these Centralians together like a rich tapestry laid out on a mountaintop. It was the kind of trust that evolves from generations of loving and living and dying…The fire took all of this away. As years passed and the fire continued to spread, the people of Centralia began to understand the true meaning of the whistle’s warning. The tapestry of their town and their lives started to unravel, first one thread, then another” (Jacobs)
Centralia was "once a successful mining town in the coal region of Pennsylvania, and now possess the state's least populated community" (Klebon). Prior to 1962, Centralia was a small coal region town that was predominantly a Catholic community which had everything someone would need to live a happy lifestyle. According to Lorraine Sedor, many of the kids, including her own, attended St. Ignatius Catholic school, and once a weekend everyone in town took a nice trip to the top of the hill to attend mass at The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Catholic Church. She, along with many other residents, agreed that their families were prospering along with the coal mining community which they called home.
Before the fire, Centralia was a town where people lived out their lives content to marry, raise children, go to church, fix up grandma’s house, and grow old, just like their ancestors who first settled”
~ Renee Jacobs, former resident of Centralia
This town was home to me, to my family, our children went to school there, and we loved everything about what it had to offer"
~ Lorraine Sedor, lived on Myers Street in Centralia, Pennsylvania with her husband and four children who attended
St. Ignatius Catholic School
I loved it. I always liked Centralia from the time I was old enough to understand what it was...If you came out of your house and you couldn't get your car started, the neighbor would come out and he'd help you. You didn't even have to ask. Of course the neighbors knew your business, but they also were there to help you, too"
~ Mary Chapman, left Centralia in 1986 but returned once a month to the social club at the Centralia fire company
After the accidental fire started in 1962, several years went by with little worry. The citizens of Centralia believed that the fire would eventually burn itself out on its own; however, the more the years went by and the more attempts to extinguish the fire failed, the more the residents of Centralia became concerned. After a few years, the people of Centralia began to realize that the ominous whistle they first heard on the spring day in May 1962 had forever changed their lives. Once worry and panic spread throughout the town, it did not take long for the population of Centralia to decrease and for national attention to increase.
It took years, decades in fact, for the people of Centralia to realize that the ominous whistle blast they heard that spring day had anything to do with the dramatic changes in their lives
It took years, decades in fact, for the people of Centralia to realize that the ominous whistle blast they heard that spring day had anything to do with the dramatic changes in their lives
For about the first fifteen years or so, it wasn't a major concern in the town. There were different projects that were advanced to put the fire out. But by and large, the general population of town wasn't too worried about it"
~ Tom Dempsey, former resident and postmaster in Centralia, moved out in 1973
It's very difficult to quantify the threat, but the major threat would be infiltration of the fire gases into the confined space of a residential living area. That was true from the very beginning and will remain true even after the fire moves out of the area"
~ Tim Altares, a geologist with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, believes the blaze still
poses a threat because it has the potential to open up new paths for deadly gases to reach the remaining homes
Failed attempts, after failed attempts, continued for nearly twenty years since the ignition of the mine fire in 1962. At first, the citizens did not feel threatened by the underground fire, but once discoveries, such as underground temperatures exceeding 172 degrees Fahrenheit, sinkholes occurring at any moment under the feet of local neighbors, and carbon monoxide exposures, were revealed to the townspeople of Centralia, the citizens realized this was a bigger problem than they had initially thought it to be. Most did not want to take any risks and fled the town as soon as possible, leaving behind the memories of the burning town they once called home. It wasn't easy for the people of Centralia to leave, especially the ones who had loved everything about the town in which they lived and who had adapted comfortably to the lifestyle. However, as citizens of Pennsylvania, they were responsible for their actions whether they chose to leave or stay in the dangerous and toxic town of Centralia. The question to flee to a safer place or to stay in their hometown (and accept the life-threatening risk of living in Centralia) seemed to divide the townspeople who lived there. The majority of Centralians cared about their health and the future of their children, and decided to make a new life somewhere safer, while others chose to stay, believing that it was merely the coal companies' plan to drive the citizens off the land. These dedicated Centralians who would not leave, and were proud of their hometown, were known as "diehards". There diehards would later became the biggest obstacle the government faced when trying to evacuate Centralia.
This fire was a serious threat to life in its heyday. I don't think there's any great public safety problem in letting those people stay there...The people that live there now, they're diehards of the diehards. They'll look you in the face and say there never was a mine fire. There's really no arguing with them"
~ David DeKok, journalist, author of "Fire Underground," has been writing about Centralia for more than 30 years
What mine fire? If you go up and see a fire, you come back and tell me"
~ Carl Womer, husband of Helen Womer (leader of a faction that fiercely resisted the government buyout), disagrees
that the fire poses any type of threat to his hometown
You can replace a home, you can't replace a family. A lot of us would be happy if the Government moved us. We've been waiting nineteen years for them to put out the fire"
~ Joan Girolami, citizen of Centralia Pennsylvania in the 1980s
"By 1992, the state of Pennsylvania invoked eminent domain on all properties in the borough, and all buildings in town were condemned. A subsequent legal effort by residents to have the decision reversed was unsuccessful" (Rhen). The town of Centralia soon turned into a ghost town in the 1990s and early 2000s. Centralia became the least populated community in Pennsylvania, and only about ten "diehards" remain there today. The town went from a successful and abundant coal mining area, to an abandoned ghost town in less than ten years. There is very little left in the town that represented either the time when thousands of people once lived there, or the fire that destroyed their lives.
It's not even like a ghost town because ghost towns have buildings remaining that are falling down. Up there, there's nothing. You don't have your old hometown to go back to. You had a lot of memories there. It's hard to believe there were once so many homes and people living there"
~ Tom Dempsey, former resident and postmaster in Centralia, moved out in 1973
You know, they say small towns are so nice. Put a tragedy in a small town, you’ll find out how nice it is. Put a disaster there, and it’s not so nice anymore"
~ Joan Girolami, former resident of Centralia
There really is no reason to stay and live in Centralia since the buildings and homes of former residents were demolished, there are no schools or job opportunities in the area, sinkholes could form in the ground at any moment, and the underground fire continues to burn and emit toxic fumes to this day. No one understands why the handful of people who still remain there want to do so, other than the fact that it is their hometown and filled with so many memories of where they grew up. The government and health departments intervened and ordered the people to leave, yet the "diehards" refuse to leave a place which holds such a special meaning to them. The state feels it is it's responsibilty to protect the people of Pennsylvania, and that allowing the citizens to stay in such a dangerous and life-threating place would violate that responsibility. However the citizens remaining in Centralia believe they have the right to stay there since they have lived there for such a long time, and have continued to pay their taxes on the land.
It's home, and they'd like to keep it that way. That's all anybody wanted from day one"
~ Tom Hynoski, among the plaintiffs in a federal civil rights lawsuit aimed at blocking the state of Pennsylvania from
evicting them
Residents say that the state has better things to spend its money on. A handwritten sign along the road blasts Govenor Tom Corbett, the latest chief executive to inherit a mess that goes back decades, "You and your staff are making budget cuts everywhere," the sign says. "How can you allow (the state) to waste money trying to force these residents out of their homes? These people want to pay their taxes and be left alone and live where they choose!" (Rubinkam).
The diehards battle for the right to stay on, scornful of the force of nature beneath their feet. The state, concerned for their safety but also seeking a tidy end to this untidy story, pushes them to join the diaspora" (DeKok).