93. Very dangerous place huh

@@DP-rx8bd yepp. That further reinforces what Lamar and his wife Lanna mentioned about the government wanting to take over the place.

Thank you.

Same

I have researched centralia with a particular interest in the town BEFORE the fire. It seemed so beautiful and quaint. A place I would have loved to retire to.

Personally, I would rather move to a condo or retirement community somewhere nicer, or at least not an abandoned coal town with a coal fire burning underneath it. Seems like such a miserably bleak and lonely way to spend your last years vs. being around other people and having things to do.

Sad to see them tearing down nice homes thats peoples history. Guess they figure they will add to the fire .

@@speedracer1945If they didn't the coal fire would probably have ignited them, spread to the forest and possible across the region, in that context, tearing down a few houses makes more sense. It's unfortunate for the people, but that's the risk of living over a coal seam.

Australian news had always the best. Really crazy stuff

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h9Blf82SyMnHemQ.html&ab_channel=Part-TimeExplorer

That doco is only 2 months old and very good if you get a chance to watch it

I've noticed lately that a lotta legitimate US news stories are coming out of Australia. Thank you.

The best piece on centralia is called "The town that was". Great documentary.

Yep thats the US Government Plus the State of PA of course it makes no sense.

because there is no gain to it .

It sounds like they spent a lot of money but failed

@@stephanie3848 there is a big diference betqeen spending money tio gain something and wasting money to gain nothing at the end .

To be fair, even if they spent a decent chunk of money to dig out the coal and extinguish the fire, it would still be a dead coal town. It's not like stopping the fire would suddenly turn it into prime real estate and attract a bunch of developers - it would still be a dead little former mining town. Even when the fire initially started the town had been on the decline, so at this point there's really not much point in throwing good money at it.

I remember when it was a functioning town in the seventies! I remember the houses started disappearing in the nineties!

@@isabelnavaro6322Before my time I am an 80s baby

😂😂😂

exactly...no protection no respirators...but it's dangerous!!

Only as dangerous as an unfiltered Pall Mall.

rofl i thought the same

Anybody still there today 2020 ?

@@holoholopainen1627 As of 2019 there were I believe 3 homes that had a total of 5 residents.

Yeah there are still 2-3 homes. Im 5 miles over the mtn from them in the farm country to the north. They drove thru the covered bridge below my house.

@@williamwertman24How Big is The Area - That You cant live on ? Howfar is The Next Town ?

@@Jason1Pa Could these People relocate to Australia ? Is Not that Burning HOT - Down Under !

I just went on Sunday and yes Graffiti Highway is gone, didn't know that going in. Was still neat to explore the town, bumped into other tourists as well

Pardon my ignorance - what will the Police fine you?

An abandoned coal town on fire is probably way down my list of places to see, but you do you.

Others interviewed were offered less than 11k for a value of 35-50k

If it had happened nowadays the fire would have probably been extinguished within a few weeks. It was government incompetence that led to this.

Is it scary driving through there, would you advise against stopping the car and having a look around? I mean, being that rural and deserted no one would "hear you scream" if you know what I mean.

@@jockejocke1 it’s not bad. There’s only 5 people living there and a lot of abandoned churches and buildings . I live in the surrounding area

@@victorious521Is the firehouse still standing?

@@infjintegrityvsnarcissism7295 I believe so. City officials are trying to keep people out of there - because it’s pretty much a ghost town

he died long ago....

Yeah you're probably right, breathing poison gas for 80 years probably isn't dangerous at all. These people are ultra smart

@@adamcoeLol, this. Whether they lived or not is immaterial, breathing in that coal smoke all those years definitely has had deleterious effects on their lungs/heart etc.

The other places always get forgot, 1000KM+ had to be evacuated after chernobyl, people only ever focus on pripyat.

Google shamokin Pa.

I see it every day, people just can't leave others alone. Especially those in power. These people want to live there, I'm sure they are aware of dangers but their love for home beats that, just let them be, don't help them, don't bother them.

​@@Priest they are citizens of the USA so they need to abide by laws still and if the town is deemed dangerous then yea they should've left Years ago. there's nothing left for them there

I’ve never even been in a room

Iv read a few articals about a few years old...sadly cant re. wear I read them but I think as of 2017 at least there wear about 5-6 residents left. a few moved back despite the Goverment saying they could not ( a few men and women who would have been kids and teens once they were told to get out. but yeah I think the enderly residants showed in this film are all gone sonce many seemed to belong to the first 1-2 generations of the 20'th centry and those 2 generations on the whole are all dead now. the reaper is now sowing the so called greatest generation but all those born from 1900- 1929 are pretty much gone or as good as.

It's only a few hours away from NYC too.

"No city in the world matters besides NYC." - pop culture in general

NYC is very close to Scranton, it is a pretty short train ride to Hoboken, NJ when the commuter trains still ran. Closer than Philly in some cases.

@@timofeegraaay8165 NYC is at least two hours from Scranton, how do you consider that CLOSE? Seriously? Philadelphia is closer for chrissakes! The train ride from Hoboken to NYC? Yep, THAT is short, I grew up in Bayonne, I know it's close but Scranton is NOT close to NYC in anyways...unless you consider an hour + close somehow! :-/

@@timofeegraaay8165 Sorry but Scranton is NOT close to NYC, unless you consider an hour and a half if not two hours from there close. Get your facts straight...Scranton IS close to Wilkes-Barre but it is NOT close to NYC...NYC is about two hours to the east of Scranton, get your facts and stats right...Hoboken IS a short ride to NYC but Scranton is NOT close to NYC...get real.

The full story is a little more complicated. In the early stages of the fire, a bunch of Pennsylvania bureaucratic stupidity resulted in the fire not being put out in a timely fashion. The state kept treating it like a public works project, with budget constraints, rather than a fire that needed to be put out. At one point, the estimated costs to finish the job of isolating the fire and putting it out, was around 450,000 dollars, inflation adjusted, but squabbling over budget resulted in nothing being done. By 1967, the cost (again, inflation adjusted) to fully trench and stop the fire had risen to 38 million dollars (still a justifiable price to pay to save a whole town). The fire eventually spread directly under the town, and by that point, the state and federal tax payers were paying (in 1981 dollars) something around $2 million (inflation adjusted) just in yearly monitoring costs, and the total cost to put out the fire was estimated to be well into the billion dollar range in today's money (e.g. no longer feasible from a cost standpoint). Ultimately, the state and federal tax payers ended up spending 42 million dollars, throughout the mid 80's to mid 90's, moving everyone out. Adjusting for inflation (averaged over 15 years), they spent ~ 2 1/2 times as much money (95 million) to move everyone out, as it would have cost to put the fire out in the late 60's and early 70's. In the end, the sad story of Centralia boils down to two lessons: deal with problems quickly, as costs to address problems tend to escalate exponentially; and don't wait for the US federal government to solve your problem, as they'll usually fail to make any decision, and once they do, it will be the wrong one and/or far too late.

I know that part choked me up a little…

they opened it in 2014 or 16..

I think the town was mainly german irish n polish

A documentary I watched they go back yearly on memorial day. Not sure if still the case.

watch A Town That Was....

No it's not Orthodox, it is Ukrainian Catholic

He passed away according to another documentary I’ve seen. I believe it was called “The Town That Was” if I remember correctly.

ya know how Florida has dangers of sinkholes from lime deposits underground from being underwater. Yeah. They worry about their entire roads and grounds collapsing from the fires. There really is no safe way to maintain that place besides taking Geology reports on the ground underneath. Besides the fact the air is toxic. It's just not an ideal place to live and the museum would serve the municipality but since its seized by the PA government it wouldn't serve much to garnering funds to rebuilding the towns.

Really what is the point? There is nobody alive to move back. The people who were displaced got money for their homes and property so its not like they could move back. You've had multiple subsidence, even recent ones and really no telling when a large one could open up. At this point the logical thing to do is re-route the road and get whatever coal is not already burned.

IIt would be nice but the ground is too unstable, the roads often collapse in many spots and it being a torist attraction with tousends and thousands of visitors a year would be too much of a danger

@@Robert08010 sad but true

Came from Joe Scott?

It’s their home

​@@missmoxie9188 not much of a home left though

@Peter Berg Where all you have is nothing, there's alot to go around. Home doesn't mean much, nothing means much more.

The comments below disappoint. They don't get it. 😂

You're right they do want the coal and that guy lying through his back teeth working for the goverment

Mrlrobertson So why don’t you go burry yourself with your billions worth of coal. 🤣

yes, the greedy government, they've obviously profited massively from this. how dare they try to keep people safe from poison gas and a massive fire! what a bunch of dicks. the geniuses in this town are clearly living their best lives

It sounds like they spent a lot of money on it but failed

No it's not - the real bridge from Beetlejuice is in Vermont. (and was covered only for the movie).

@@Geekywitch nerd...😂

@@Crazyjn Proudly! :)

@Rebel Georgia INFANTRY The cross with the single crossbeam is used in Western churches. The cross of the Eastern Orthodox Church has the smaller crossbeam at the top and a diagonal one at the lower part. The upper one represents Pilates inscription INRI, the middle one is where the hands are fastened and the lower is the footrest wher the feet are fastened. There were probably immigrants in this area from Eastern Europe or Russia.

The Church they showed was Orthodox.

@@DavidSmith-sb2ix There was a lot of people from the Ukraine!

It is actually Ukrainian Catholic

4 houses left, according to my relatives in the nearby towns. There are less than 10 people all elderly who are allowed to remain till their death.

11 people still live there

Me.

The interview lady said they are “practically squatters “...... How RUDE and incencitive. That’s their home 🏠.

The interviewer was jokingly saying the government might view them as squatters. But really, she was presenting them with a hypothetical concept; sarcasm and humor in her tone, and their response indicated they understood it. I mean, he’s the mayor after all, and he’s been asked all the questions by now, I’m sure. She was anything but condescending.

2003

yes in 2014 or 2016..they opened it(I cant remember exactly.)

2014 (2 years earlier due to vandalism)

That fire has never killed anyone. That’s their point.

@@handle-schmandle A 12 year old boy almost fell to his death when a hole opened in his back yard. Why wait until until someone dies?

@@tomasallende9583 The problem is that the subsidence you mention happened in 1981. The highway was rerouted in 1993. Since that time, thousands of tourists and urbexers have walked and driven all over that area without incident. If those people feel like they were lied to, I don’t blame them. Maybe it was a smart precaution to move out, but we definitely should not be mocking the ones who stayed.

Unless of course the government is trying to kill you first 🙄

@@handle-schmandle I'm not mocking them, but I find it odd that they are so emotionally involved with a piece of land that's devoid of people.

Its steam from the steamed steam

Well, research the history and the early immigrant settlers. Then it might make sense lol

@@erikm8372 I don’t dare

It's not Orthodox, it is Ukrainian Catholic. There were a lot of Ukrainian immigrants that lived there that were Catholic

@@stephanie3848 ah, fascinating!

The Silent Hill game has no connection to this town.

Maybe they'll be able to rebuild the town with all electric 😂

The same coal that Al Gorf said would melt the polar ice caps by 2013. 🤣

Serpico...

Most of the residents are of Irish decent as most of There parents and grand parents were immigrants

History showed that majority of Irish immigrants that worked in the coal mines.

I mean maybe they can put out the fire but they'd need to demolish most of the town, who's they?

5

They reached a settlement which allows them to life rights. Once they die off their house is demolished.

That's how the government is which is allso why this country has the problems it does.sad what happened to this town

I know literally dozens of Federal government employees, most Senior Level Executives or at least GS 14 and not one of them wants to hurt the American citizens or our towns and communities. This is such hateful bullshit that I get sick of hearing it. Come work for the government, Federal or your state, see for yourself, do something good beside spreading lies and hate towards your fellow citizens who love this country and work our asses off for the likes of you.

Yep that sounds about right aswell

@@timofeegraaay8165 I've worked with government employees. I've yet to see one who worked their ass off.

you would not want to dynamite it but i think when I was in middle school about 15-17 years ago in class we talked about it and by that time the state of PA had given up trying to put it out and pretty much the best way to stop it will be to mine the coal that lays ahead of the fire. But you must Rember coal mineing is a slow and precise process you cant half ass it ess bc. coal is a valuable recorce more so than Oil.

@@e.jenima7263 yeah that might be the way to do it. What about this: Cut a new entrance ahead of the fire, then send in some people that can take some forms into the mine and pour a concrete wall in its path sealing it off, then seal off the original entrance. Might work...? Do a Boots and Coots type explosion to cave in the mine?