Some time back I wrote a post on the Peshtigo, Wisconsin fire of 1871. That fire, one of the worst natural disasters on American soil, must have seemed like Hell to the residents of the small frontier town. Peshtigo regrew after the fire and is a thriving community today. On the way to a family wedding in Ohio, we stopped in Centralia, Pennsylvania yesterday. Centralia is its own variety of Hell on Earth. In 1962, a fire in a trash heap set an exposed coal seam on fire. The fire spread into a coal mine and has proved impossible to extinguish. The fire burns deep underground today, nearly fifty years after it started. Some analysts suggest that there is enough fuel in this anthracite-rich area to keep the fire burning for a thousand years.

Today Centralia is a ghost town. Toxic fumes, sinkholes, and at times unbearable ground temperatures have driven many away. The federal government bought out the remainder; however, fewer than ten people still live here, refusing to leave their homes. When I learned that we’d be stopping in a nearby town for the night, I diverted our route to Centralia. There is really nothing to see. Two houses were all that I counted, and abandoned roads run into the untrimmed bushes like Life After People. While I attempted to get a feel for the place, my family spotted another car cautiously driving the abandoned roadways, looking for some ineffable handle on this man-made natural disaster. While not to the scale of the Deepwater Horizon spill, it is another example of the lust for fossil fuels and what might go wrong when these volatile substances accidentally escape human control.

Centralia, Pennsylvania

I couldn’t find the perfect picture of Centralia. There is no perfect picture here. Wary of sinkholes and reports of hostile locals, I pulled aside to take in the overall scene. On a hillside not far away, giant wind turbines lazily spun in the summer air. This clean energy alternative felt almost like an apology for setting the earth aflame below the feet of a town inhabited by mostly ghosts and less than a dozen living souls. In my head I knew that the temperature was 1000 degrees Fahrenheit well below, that 1000 people had been relocated, and 1000 years from now the fire may still be burning. Who needs a metaphorical Hell when human beings are so good at creating their own physical perditions?