page_title: Centralia mine fire
section_title: Fire
hierarchical_section_title: Centralia mine fire / Fire
caption_attribution_description: English: Smoke wafts from a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) monitoring hole in Centralia, Pennsylvania. The town has been nearly abandoned due to an underground coal mine fire that has been burning for decades. The measured temperature at 10 feet was 187 °F (about 86 °C).
context_page_description: The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962. Its original cause is still a matter of debate. It is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet over an 8-mile stretch of 3,700 acres. At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years. It has caused most of the town to be abandoned: the population dwindled from around 1,500 at the time the fire started to 5 in 2017, and most of the buildings have been razed.
context_section_description: This was a world where no human could live, hotter than the planet Mercury, its atmosphere as poisonous as Saturn's. At the heart of the fire, temperatures easily exceeded 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit [540 degrees Celsius]. Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled through the rock chambers.
  — David DeKok, Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986)
caption: A DEP monitoring hole
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