Fire within the earth
As a mine still burns, reasons are sought
Nearly everybody fiddled while the coal town of Centralia burned.
Joan Quigley's excellent study,
The Day the Earth Caved In, takes up several fascinating topics — among them the history of 19th Century mining and the politics of coal — but her central question is: "Why did so many residents want to stay in Centralia, even as toxic fumes and cave-ins beset part of the community they loved?"
The author tells her tale extremely well and is mostly neutral in the disputes. If she has a villain, it is Ronald Reagan's ideology-obsessed Interior secretary, James Watt, whose determination to make Centralia solely Pennsylvania's problem held up distribution of available funds.
Ultimately, it was a legal and political mess Watt got into that led to a $42 million relocation package (and Watt's resignation) in 1983. Razing of buildings and dispersal of residents followed soon thereafter.
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Originally posted by JNA
