Hell on Earth in USA - tiny town in Pennsylvania

By Keith Thuerk | Financial Stewardship | 10 Oct 2024

Background

There is a tiny town in the northwest part of Pennsylvania that has been dubbed hell on earth. Let's to back in history to when America was coal powered nation. The town of Centralia has several large coal mines and more and more people are settling in the town to be close to work, coal mining. As the town grew so did the town dump (trash site) and back in 1962 a decision was made to light the mountain of trash on fire. They started the fire that and when they came back to check on it found that it was still burning. However this burn offered a much deeper and hotter burn. Someone from the safety crew pointed out the fire was coming out of the ground. Had it reached the coal mine? Yes, and the town firefighters attempted to put out the fire without much success. The fire smoldered and was largely forgotten.

Fire continued to burn

The extent of the fire was not fully understood until 1979 and an astute gas station owner pointed out that the temperature gauges for his underground tanks were 100° above normal. Seems the original trash fire had gotten so hot it caused the roof of a mine to collapse and the fire heap fell into the coal mine. Recall the fire was hot, and it caught the coal deposits on fire. Again years later the local fire department attempted to put out the blaze, but a series of tunnels connected most of the area coal mines and their efforts were fruitless.

The longer the fire burned the more coal it consumed and the further it spread into other mines and tunnels. The byproduct of the fire is noxious gas and carbon dioxide. As people got sick and saw vast areas of vegetation die off from the underground fire they moved away. Creating a modern ghost town in modern times, at its peak about 1,500 people lived in Centralia and by 1990 there was only 60 or so residents remained. This number dropped even further and only 12 people remained by 2012. How long would it take you to leave a town or city when something like this happens?

Other signs to the town of Centralia

Plant life and roads were and continue to be impacted by the heat of the fire, so much so that that main highway leading into Centralia had to be torn up as the repair costs were unsustainable.

The image below is was taken on 'graffiti highway' see that huge separation in the asphalt? That is one of many I came across while doing research on this hell on earth blog.

The Centralia Mine Fire has been Burning for 50 plus years.

Which from a Crypto perspective this makes me wonder, is a manner to safely harness all the fire energy and power Crypto mining operations? Sure this is a one off of El Salvador tapping into the geothermal heat from their volcano. But I am curious has anyone attempted to harness the inferno for power generation? If yes, what were the results?