A century ago, there was a small town called Centellaria in Pennsylvania, which was very rich because of its rich mineral resources. At its peak in 1890, the town of Centria had a population of up to 2,761 and was home to 7 churches, 5 hotels, 27 taverns, 2 theatres, 1 bank, 1 post office, and 14 generals and grocery stores.
By 1960, however, the town had only about 1,400 inhabitants left. In 2011, the road to the town was permanently closed, making it a "ghost town", and the town was also used as a reference material for the horror movie "Silent Hill".
50 years later, the town of Santelleria is still creepy today, with fewer than 10 people left. When stepping on the land of this town, you can only feel the silence of death. At the same time, you can see a continuous white smoke rising from the ground, covering the entire town. This is because the whole town sits on top of the flames.
What happened in this town? It all started in the 1860s.
At the time, the town of Centrelia, Pennsylvania, was home to members of Molly Maguires, a secret organization that originated in Ireland and traveled with Irish immigrants to the American coal mines. The town of Centellaria sits right atop one of the largest anthracite coal deposits in the United States: the Mammoth Vein.
In the decades that followed, Pennsylvania's anthracite coal production peaked, and the town of Centella became a mining center. But as the United States entered World War I, many young miners from the town of Centellalia enlisted in the army, so their production began to decline. This was followed by the Wall Street crash of 1929, which resulted in the closure of five coal mines in the town of Centrelia. But while the stock market crash and the Great Depression hit the town's coal industry hard, it didn't kill the town, but another tragedy, starting with a landfill.
Garbage was a thorny issue in Centrelia because there were unregulated dumps everywhere, and it wasn't until 1962, when an abandoned mine pit was converted into a dump, that the smell and rats that appeared with the garbage really disappeared. But when the town's government ordered the garbage mountain to be burned, another disaster ensued, ignoring that the garbage mountain was above an old coal mine. As the flames gradually engulfed the garbage, they also ignited the underground coal mine. Soon, a fire broke out in the coal seam below the town and spread to the mine tunnels below the town streets. As a result, the local mine was closed due to the toxic carbon monoxide produced by combustion.
The flames burned from 1962 to today, as the local government failed in several attempts to dig up and extinguish the fire. For example, they drafted a three-option proposal: the first, which cost $277,490, consisted of eradicating fires and sequestering them and backfilling trenches with non-combustibles; the second,151,714, digging smaller trenches within a certain range and then closing them with flush barriers; and the third, which was larger than the second, but estimated at $82,300. However, it was not implemented due to high costs.
As the years passed, the ground beneath the city itself became hotter and hotter, reaching more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit in some places. Smoke poured out of sinkholes and gas-filled basements. A large number of animals and plants were killed, and the residents began to have health problems. Some residents sit at home and slowly lose consciousness without feeling it. The town also began to collapse because of the underground coal fire, cracks appeared in the walls and ground, and more and more houses began to fall. In the end, the U.S. Congress had to allocate $42 million to pay for the housing of local residents and move them out.
Decades later, the surface of today's town is no longer as hot as it once was, but the coal fire has never been extinguished. In the cold winter, the town of Centrella is still a land of ice and fire. While the air can be very cold, the ground may be hotter than in a sauna. The fire is always underground away from the surface, burning quietly. To this day, on the ridge south of the burning town of Centrelia, the air is filled with a pungent smell of sulfur and a constant release of steam. Experts estimate that the flames here will burn for another 50 or even 250 years before they are extinguished.
Interestingly, the town's notoriety didn't stop explorers. This real-life "hell on earth" has become a mecca for adventurers, and has also provided inspiration for many creators, and games and movies based on small towns have become very popular. And many people who come to admire the name are also on the road to the town, leaving their own traces through graffiti, making the abandoned road colorful, forming an alternative and interesting scene.
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In China's Helan Mountain, there is also a burning mountain, which looks red from a distance. It is said that the burning of coal seams there can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty, which burned for more than three hundred years, and it is still Taixi anthracite coal known as "Taixi Ujin". According to estimates, there are now 1.15 million tons of Taixi coal lost to spontaneous combustion alone, which is equivalent to burning out 1 billion yuan per year. And the scope of the fire area is still expanding, and there is news that the Taixi anthracite coal here will burn out in 50 years!