This Town Has Been on Fire Since 1962

In May 1962, a fire started at the town dump in Centralia, Pennsylvania. It got into the abandoned coal mines under the town, and it has never gone out. This is the real story: how the fire most likely started (and the other theories), why every attempt to stop it failed, the 12-year-old boy who fell into a steaming sinkhole on Valentine's Day 1981, the $42 million buyout that emptied the town, the ZIP code that was taken away, the people who refused to leave, the Graffiti Highway, and what Centralia looks like now. Every fact is sourced below. Photos of Centralia are real and captioned with their year. A few scenes we have no photos of are AI-generated recreations, and they are labeled RECREATION or ILLUSTRATION on screen. CHAPTERS 0:00 A fire under a Pennsylvania town 0:48 Chapter 1: The Spark 2:53 Chapter 2: The Fire They Couldn't Catch 4:20 Chapter 3: The Boy and the Hole 5:30 Chapter 4: Buy Out a Town 6:49 Chapter 5: The Ones Who Stayed 7:38 Chapter 6: The Graffiti Highway 8:38 Chapter 7: Still Burning SOURCES • Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, "The Centralia Mine Fire: Frequently Asked Questions" (Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation): files.dep.state.pa.us/mining/Abandoned%20Mine%20Reclamation/AbandonedMinePortalFiles/Centralia/CentraliaFrequentlyAskedQuestions.pdf • PA DEP, "Chronology: A Brief History of the Centralia Mine Fire": pa.gov/agencies/dep (Centralia Mine Fire Resources) • David DeKok, author of "Fire Underground" and "Unseen Danger": daviddekok.com/centralia-mine-fire/ • UPI, "A 21-year mine fire that has riddled the ground…" (July 12, 1983): upi.com/Archives/1983/07/12/ • Associated Press, Feb. 14, 1981 (Todd Domboski), via Wikipedia "Centralia mine fire" and the Christian Science Monitor (Feb. 5, 2010): csmonitor.com • CentraliaPA.org, "How the Mine Fire Nearly Killed Todd Domboski" (2014) and "Coddington's Gas Station and the Centralia Mine Fire" • TIME, "The Hottest Town in America" (archive) • PennLive / The Patriot-News, Centralia settlement (Oct. 2013): pennlive.com/midstate/2013/10/centralia_condemnation_fight_e.html • Lehigh Valley Live / AP, "Final Centralia, Pa., residents can live out lives in town atop burning mine" (Oct. 31, 2013) • NBC10 Philadelphia / AP, "Centralia's final days" (2013) • History.com, "A Mine Fire Has Been Burning for More Than 50 Years…" • The News-Item (Shamokin), "Centralia PA loses its ZIP code" (Sept. 20, 2002), via centraliapa.com • U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census, Centralia borough, PA (population 5): data.census.gov; historical counts via Wikipedia • Williamsport Sun-Gazette / AP, "Centralia's 'Graffiti Highway' being buried" (April 2020); PhillyVoice (April 6, 2020) • Hazleton Standard-Speaker, "Ukrainian church in Centralia designated as pilgrimage site" (Aug. 26, 2016) PHOTO & FOOTAGE CREDITS 42 photos from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA, CC BY and public domain, used with attribution) by: LaesaMajestas, formulanone, Mr. Matté, Z22, Lyndi & Jason, Mredden, Josh Byington, Marisa DeMeglio, Tom Vazquez, Codyrt, Macaddct1984, Navy2004, Reelcheeper, SPP1996, Vasiliy Meshko, CapturinG - HistorY, Bob, JohnDS; plus U.S. Bureau of Mines, USDA/Penn Pilot (PA Geological Survey), NASA ASTER Science Team, and The Mebane Greeting Card Co. (Boston Public Library, Tichnor Brothers collection). Stock b-roll from Pexels (Pexels License). Full list with every file, author, license and link: https://heartland-doc4.sites.tab.bot/... Map outline: U.S. state boundaries (public domain data). Thumbnail photos: "Smoke Rising From The Former Pennsylvania Route 61" by LaesaMajestas (CC BY-SA 4.0) and "Pdr 1647" (Route 61 crack) by JohnDS (public domain), with text added. AI DISCLOSURE: Narration is an AI voice. Four scenes we have no photos of are AI-generated images, each labeled RECREATION or ILLUSTRATION and "AI-GENERATED IMAGE · NOT A PHOTOGRAPH" on screen: the 1962 town-dump fire, the fire in the mine tunnels, the 1979 gas station, and the 1981 backyard sinkhole (shown without any person). No real person is shown in any AI image. Music and sound effects were generated for this channel. Would you have stayed in Centralia? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe to Heartland Files for the American disasters and "what really happened" stories nobody fully explains. #Centralia #Pennsylvania #Documentary