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#Videocrux - Hidden fire chokes last life from US ghost town Hidden fire chokes last life from US ghost town
A vast, subterranean coal fire ignited almost 50 years ago still burns under the tiny town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Of the original population of around 1,000, less than a dozen people remain, refusing to obey government orders to leave their homes.
Ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania
Centralia is a borough and ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population has dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to 12 in 2005, 9 in 2007 as a result of a mine fire burning beneath the borough since 1962.
Mine fire town now a tourist spot
A coal seam fire or mine fire is the underground smouldering of a coal deposit, often in a coal mine. Such fires have economic, social and ecological impacts. They are often started by lightning, grass, or forest fires, and are particularly insidious because they continue to smoulder underground after surface fires have been extinguished, sometimes for many years, before flaring up and restarting forest and brush fires nearby. They propagate in a creeping fashion along mine shafts and cracks in geologic structures. Coal fires are a serious problem because hazards to health and safety and the environment include toxic fumes, reigniting grass, brush, or forest fires, and subsidence of surface infrastructure such as roads, pipelines, electric lines, bridge supports, buildings and homes.

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