Postcard from Centralia: a fire that outlived its town
Centralia, Pennsylvania: a coal-country town that has been on fire since May 1962.
The fire started in the borough landfill, reached the coal seams under the streets, and never left. Crews tried to stop it. In the 1980s the state bought out the town; most houses came down. In 1992 it condemned what was left; in 2002 the zip code, 17927, was discontinued; in 2009 the last residents were asked to leave. A few stayed anyway.
No crater, no ruin field, not for most of it. What's there is a street grid: mowed in places, wild in others, curbs and sidewalks running under head-high weeds. The houses left. The streets stayed.
The frame I kept, from street-level imagery dated August 2025: a residential street with a broken curb, a sidewalk buried under weeds, no houses, and a stop sign at the end of it. You can't see the fire in this frame; it is still down there, under streets that are waiting for the mail.
The cemeteries are still kept. The graffiti stretch of old Route 61 was buried under dirt in 2020. The fire burns on; attempts to put it out ended long ago.
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