The Centralia Mine Fire

In 1962, a routine landfill cleanup went underway in Centralia, Penn. Burning trash was a common way of clearing it out, except this time something was different - fire fell into a hole leading to an abandoned coal mine.  What proceeded was decades health issues for the residents, toxic gases in homes and schools, the threat of the ground opening up from underneath their feet, and .... government inaction on almost every level. Today, the town is near abandoned and looks like something from an apocalypse movie. We'll talk about what happened and how it ended up as a worse-case scenario, and how the incident should serve as a warning (and example) for current leaders in our climate crisis.