This Town Has Been Burning Since 1962. Take Nothing Out.

In May 1962, the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, had a trash problem. So it did what towns did then. It burned the garbage in an old pit at the edge of town.¹

The pit sat on top of a coal seam. Centralia was a mining town. Underneath it ran a maze of abandoned mine tunnels and veins of coal.

The fire got into the coal.¹

It never came out.

For the next twenty years, the fire spread slowly underground, following the coal. Smoke leaked from cracks in the roads. Snow melted on some lawns and not others. Gas levels in basements climbed. People got headaches and didn't know why.¹

In 1981, the ground opened up in a backyard. A twelve-year-old boy fell into a steaming sinkhole about 150 feet deep. He grabbed a tree root and held on until his cousin pulled him out.² The air in the hole was full of deadly carbon monoxide.

After that, the country finally paid attention. In 1984, Congress set aside about 42 million dollars to buy out the town and move everyone away.² Most people took the money. Their houses were torn down. The state took the rest by eminent domain. In 2002, the post office took away Centralia's ZIP code.²

About a thousand people lived there in 1980.² In 2020, the census counted five.³

Experts estimate the fire has enough coal to keep burning for 250 more years.¹

Kyle Brennan's grandmother never talked about Centralia. She had lived there until she was forty. She took the buyout in 1985, moved to Allentown, and never went back. When anyone asked, she said one thing.

"It was a good town. It's gone."

She died in the spring. Kyle cleaned out her storage unit. Most of it was tax returns and Christmas decorations. In the back was a cardboard box with CENTRALIA written on it in marker. And underneath, in different marker, newer: DO NOT OPEN.

Inside was a coffee can, sealed with layer after layer of duct tape.

It was warm.

He held it in his hands in the cold storage unit, in March, and the can was warm. Not hot. Warm like a mug someone just set down.

He cut the tape.

Inside was black cinder, crumbly, like the stuff at the bottom of a fireplace. On top of the cinder was a house key on a ring stamped ST. IGNATIUS. And a child's drawing, folded small. A street of houses in crayon, with orange lines underneath all of them, like roots.

Taped to the inside of the lid was an index card, in his grandmother's careful handwriting.

When we left, they told us: take nothing out of Centralia. Not a stone, not a brick, not a handful of dirt. The fire follows what belongs to it.

I took the key to our house. I wanted to keep something. The fire came for it every year. Every year I had to put it back in the cinders to keep it quiet.

If you are reading this, I am gone. Do not keep the key. Take it back. Put it in the ground on Locust Avenue where our house was. Then walk away and do not look back at the smoke.