This is Centralia, a ghost town situated in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, USA. There lived more than 5,000 people in 1960. There have been a movie theater, 3 schools, a dozen of restaurants, a post office and 7 churches. It was an ordinary prosperous miner town. Now, in 2010, only 4 people reside there. Most of the abandoned buildings have been demolished by humans or nature. At a casual glance, the area now appears to be a field with many paved streets running through it. Some areas are being filled with new-growth forest. The remaining church in the borough, St. Mary's, holds weekly services on Sunday and is unaffected by the fire. The town's four cemeteries—including one on the hilltop has smoke rising around and out of it… The reason to all of this is a mine fire that happened in the early 60’s and is remaining unextinguished until today. The fire is will continue to burn for a predicted 250 more years. That’s what David DeKok told about the town (1986): “This was a world where no human could live, hotter than the planet Mercury, its atmosphere as poisonous as Saturn's. At the heart of the fire, temperatures easily exceeded 1,000 degrees [Fahrenheit]. Lethal clouds of carbon monoxide and other gases swirled through the rock chambers.” The burning fire gradually moves in all directions, threatening the adjacent cities. Ironically, the name of one of the nearest towns of Centralia is Ashland…
