A blast from the past!
February 1986.. the UPI.. this article appeared on global news wires about the mine fire in Pennsylvania.. about 33 years ago at this time this is posted..
Reporter Leon Daniel wrote about the demolition of properties in Centralia, and some of the holdouts..
From the UPI archives, for your historical enjoyment:
LEON DANIEL, UPI National Reporter
CENTRALIA, Pa. — Only the brave — and perhaps the stubborn – remain in this Dantesque town.
For Centralia is doomed. Tongues of blue flame dance ever closer to houses framed by plumes of noxious gases belching constantly from the scorched earth.
A foreboding to start a news story.. accurate as well..
The article from the second term of Reagan goes on to report,
The bureaucrats finally have pulled the plug. Centralia’s vital signs are fading fast from almost a quarter-century atop a voracious underground coal-mine fire.
Hopes and dreams of families are bulldozed daily in the continuing demolition of houses, businesses, schools and churches.
For the townspeople who bitterly blame federal and state governments for failing to extinguish the fire, those hopes and dreams die hard.
But most Centralians, encouraged by generous government settlements for the sale of their property, have moved elsewhere — or soon will — to build new lives.
The fire, believed started in a town dump in the spring of 1962, almost immediately forced some mines to close. Centralians fought valiantly to save their town, but only a few diehards remain.
Defying unsuccessful ‘final solutions,’ the fire alternately smoulders and rages, feeding on the rich seams of coal that gave birth to the town in 1866 at the foot of Locust Mountain, deep in the Pennsylvania coalfields between Harrisburg and Scranton.
The death of Centralia, a quintessential American town settled mainly by Irish, Poles and Ukrainians, is a story of both hope and despair. Now that coal no longer is king in Centralia, only a couple of hundred of the town’s population of 2,450 remain. But three churches attest to the abiding faith of those staying, and front yards and windows of the few inhabited houses display shrines to the Virgin Mary.
Centralia never was a picturebook town. It was a grimy, hard-scrabble place where a kid could serve as an altar boy or play Little League baseball before he was old enough to drink beer in the taverns and go down into the mines or off to war.
But residents subscribed to the old English law that a man’s home is his castle, and basked in the American Dream of owning their modest homes. Their dreams were forged and strengthened by the fire raging underground.
‘They won’t get me out of here,’ declared Mary Lou Gaughan, 59, but blamed the fire for the death of her husband, Anthony.
‘This fire killed him,’ she said in the neat parlor of her hilltop house which is unremittingly assaulted by the dark and deadly plumes that have driven off all but a few of her neighbors.
Gaughan said the fumes had worsened her husband’s black lung — the coal miners’ disease — and stress had compounded his other ailments, which included diabetes.
‘I’m going to fight to the end, come hell or high water,’ said the coal miner’s daughter who grew up to marry one. ‘I want the fire put out. Everybody thinks I’m crazy, but they won’t get me out.’
‘They’ are the government officials who warn their purchase offers for threatened homes is about to expire and will not be renewed.
Mary Lou Gaughan, quoted in this article, is an amazing person and, in 2019, healthy and lovely as can be… So strange to see how fast the years go..
The UPI article continues,
‘Money is not what my home is all about,’ said Gaughan, a seamstress who expressed disapproval of her neighbors who accepted relocation and bitterness toward the government.
‘People with shacks got brand new homes,’ said Gaughan, who with her husband expanded their small house ovhe years to a comfortable 10-room dwelling — painted white, as if to defy the dark plumes. ‘I’m bitter against the government.’
Then, softening, the woman who raised three children in her house atop the inferno, said, ‘I just can’t leave. There are too many memories.’ —
Gaughan has crammed three foot-thick scrapbooks with clippings, photos and correspondence dealing with the fire. They record the history of the fire seething in a honeycomb of old mines, and the futile efforts to extinguish it.
After sudden cave-ins callapsed cellar walls and backyards, Centralians voted 2-to-1 in a nonbinding referendum to abandon the town, which at night resembles an inferno of red-glowing hot spots where ground temperatures reach 1,000 degrees.
Many who chose to leave had respiratory ills and headaches. Others feared for the safety of children playing near the hot spots. One youngster almost died in a backyard cave-in.
Because so many families with children have left town, the Teen Club was disbanded and the Boy Scout troop is threatened. Doubts exist enough players can be recruited to field a Little League team this spring.
The teen club… children without their friends… my entire childhood got wrecked as my family assimilated to a new location when we left the mine-fire … It was strange and interesting.. but as I, and so many more my age ponder, what would have happened if the town never would have died away…
More from Leon Daniel,
Newly vacant lots display ‘Danger-Keep Out’ signs against deadly carbon monoxide. Red numbers mark houses to be demolished. Many inhabited homes have monitors that sound a carbon-monoxide alarm.
The decision to abandon the town came after experts, using infrared aerial photography to create a thermal map, determined Centralia was in grave, immediate danger.
The current plan is to dig a deep, fire-barrier trench through an abandoned town. Experts say there is enough coal to feed the fire for 10 centuries.
Efforts to deal with the fire have cost millions, including $42 million allocated by Congress in 1983 for relocation. Some Centralians scoff.
‘They could have put it out for $50,000 when it first started,’ Gaughan said. ‘They made all these promises to us and now all they’re doing is getting rid of the town.’
Mayor John Wondolski guessed perhaps 30 families would remain. He will not be among them. But he was quick to insist, ‘Nobody has been in any danger. If there had been any danger, I’d have rushed out of here a lot quicker.’
Wondolski said people are accepting the ‘fabulous offers’ for their houses. ‘I’d stay if most of the others would,’ he said, acknowledging his decision had angered some diehards.
Wondolski, a heavy equipment operator who works in strip-mining, said the borough’s annual budget has shrunk to $37,000 and soon will disappear. There will little property left to tax.
He said most people move just outside town, despite an unemployment rate in the area he estimates at 15 percent — more than double the national average.
Police Chief Thomas McGinley, whose great-grandfather immigrated from Ireland and died in a Centralia mine, knows he will not patrol much longer.
‘I’m vested in my pension,’ said McGinley, who is using the ‘fair price’ he said he got for his house to build a better one on a hill overlooking the town where he was born and raised.
The town no longer has a jail, but with only a single tavern still open and no crime, he does not need one — even for the occasional drunk.
Sister Honor Murphy, a Dominican nun, left the Kentucky coalfields three years ago to help Centralia’s homeowners organize to protect their interests when the government began implementing its relocation plan.
She said of the holdouts, ‘I’m convinced the government eventually will make them go — one way or another.’
‘Those who are taking advantage of the buyouts just want to get on with their lives,’ she said. ‘It’s especially hard for the older people. These are people who were born in the houses they live in.’
Murphy believes the government has been fair.
‘I’d say, by and large, the people are getting a good deal in selling their houses,’ she said, ‘They’re getting new homes in a fireproof area.’
Murphy said she tries to convince people that home is not necessarily Centralia but ‘where the heart is.’
‘It’s not a very convincing argument,’ she acknowledged. ‘It’s heartbreaking for the older people. A lot of it is fear of the unknown.’
Nor is it easy for the young.
‘I don’t want to go,’ said Christopher Polites, 12, whose paper route has dwindled to 28 subscribers from the 72 on the books when his older brother, now in college, had the job.
He will be moving with his family to Mount Carmel, four miles away, where he already attends school because those in Centralia have been closed.
Molly Darrah, borough president and retired Centralia postmaster, and her invalid sister, Winifred Blazer, live in a neat row house with their dog Holly on Locust Avenue between two of the few remaining businesses — a bank and a small grocery.
Blazer, 72, remembers the days when Locust, the town’s main street, was busy.
‘Oh, I remember the old Walsh Theater,’ she said, recalling it had featured silent films. Now it is a funeral home.
‘We want to stay,’ said Darrah, 62, who was born in the house. ‘There’s no place like home. My daddy worked in the mines until he opened a barber shop. We’re Irish. My daddy went to bed singing and he got up singing. Oh, this was a happy place. My mother ran Darrah’s Lunch Room. We had wonderful homemade soups and pies.’
She scoffs at the dangers of living atop a mine fire.
‘The air is perfect,’ she said. ‘I’m as healthy as can be. My solution is to pray and keep myself occupied. We love it here. Maybe some people want mansions and gorgeous homes, but you can’t buy happiness.’
When her neighbors move, one by one, they leave their house keys with Darrah. She has 18 in a little blue box.
I absolutely love the next portion of the ’86 UPI article..
This section quotes Joe Popson–I have fond memories from my childhood of this store and very fond memories of Joe Popson.. I can almost hear him speak as I read his quote in the final section of the UPI article:
‘Oh, it’s sad when they leave,’ she said. ‘I never ask people if they’re leaving. We love them if they leave or stay.’
Jim McFadden’s job is to demolish the homes of lifetime friends.
‘It’s just a job,’ he said. ‘If I don’t do it somebody else will.’
Displaying a photograph of an empty lot, McFadden said, ‘This here is the whole 200-block of Locust Avenue that we took down.’
Demolition teams have not yet reached Popson’s Market, a small grocery Joe Popson opened 50 years ago.
‘The bureaucrats should all be put in jail,’ said Popson, 69. ‘There’s nothing wrong with this town. It’s not burning.’
He acknowledges a fire burns down there somewhere, but insists prompt government action could have extinguised it.
Douglas McClintock of the Columbia County Redevelopment Authority is engaged in acquiring and demolishing houses and relocating the people who lived in them.
McClintock said 104 of the town’s 408 structures are gone, and, when his job is finished, perhaps as few as 30 will remain.
Most Centralians agree government officials have shunned high-pressure tactics. Prices, based on the number of square feet of living space, are considered fair by most homeowners and generous by some.
Jack Carling, chief of the disaster programs division, Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs, said the average offer for a house is about $25,000, but in addition sellers ‘get the difference in that price and what it would cost to build or buy a comparable house in the area. Those differences average $30,000 and up. Packages are running around $65,000 to $75,000, but some get as much as $90,000.’
Carling, who has worked in similar resettlement programs, said, ‘I’ve never seen a deal like this.’
Faye Mekosh, on a frequent visit to Centralia, does not regret having moved to a community nearby, but concedes she misses the town where she was christened, got married and gave birth to four children.
Mekosh says she does not miss her family’s health problems that she attributes to the fire.
‘We were always tired and headachey,’ she said. ‘The kids were always miserable. I feel I made the right move. I got a good deal.’
A new report released this month disclosed Centralia residents have a greater incidence of respiratory and gastrointestinal disease, hypertension, depression and anxiety than residents of Marion Heights, a coal town seven miles west.
‘It is possible that the negative health effects observed for Centralia residents are due to direct effects of the fire, to stress experience or both,’ said the study’s director, Dr. Siegfried Streufert of Pennsylvania State University.
Darrah is sympathetic to her neighbors who have left, but does not envy their new houses.
‘Sure, it’s sad when anyone leaves,’ she said with a hint of the Irish brogue she inherited from her singing father. ‘A prayer and a part of you go with them.’
But, she says quietly, ‘destroying this town is a sin.’
In the window of the Pennsylvania National Bank branch office, which will be taken down when demolition resumes next week, there’s a handwritten note directing customers to the Ashland office.
Next to the bank, Joseph Popson’s one-room grocery store silently awaits the wrecking ball. Popson, who worked his way up from helper to owner, kept the place going until he was ordered out last month so that the building could be torn down.
Despite the appearance of impending doom, Centralia refuses to die.
Among the rows of boarded-up houses, there are signs of life – an occasional house with curtains on the windows, a porch light shining on an otherwise darkened street, a car parked out front.
A group of hard-core residents – 38 families – are staying in Centralia.
This story of Joe Popson, one of someone who worked his entire life to achieve the final ownership of a store only to have it taken from him, is hard to recall.. hard to read.. hard to imagine..
As is all of the businesses from Centralia.. and all of the homes. And families..
The Allentown MORNING CALL concludes their 1988 dispatch with this story of Roman Kenenitz:
Thirty years ago, Roman Keninitz was the best pool shooter in Centralia. He could run 50 balls in a row in straight pool.
At 72, the pool games are just a memory.
But Keninitz, a retired miner, preserved the pool room he ran in the front room of his house.
The old pool table hasn’t been used in decades, but it’s still there, covered and gathering dust. The balls are racked and the cue sticks are on the wall, which is covered with photos of the Keninitz family.
“Why should I sell?” asked Keninitz, standing near an old National cash register that serves as a mantle for photos of him taken in Europe during World War II. “This is where I belong.”
Keninitz refused to sell his half of the double-block home on Locust Avenue, Centralia’s main street. The other half of the house, however, was scheduled to be knocked down and the old pool shooter wasn’t looking forward to it.
Almost in defiance, Keninitz decorated his storefront window with Centralia memorabilia. There are dried-out newspaper clippings of the old Centralia High School and the Hammond Colliery, one of the town’s last. And there’s a lump of coal and the old carbide lamp Keninitz used for light in the mine tunnels.
“I don’t like it,” he said of what was about to happen to his house. “I don’t like it.”
But the old miner, who suffered from black lung disease, was spared the indignity of seeing his home cut in half.
On March 5, a month before demolition was to begin, Roman Keninitz died in the house he refused to give up.
The rest? … in smoke since then.
