On Monday, 7/30, I visited Centralia with geologist Dan Vice, from the Hazelton campus. Dan has been researching the coal fire that led to the abandonment of Centralia. He is interested in using remote sensing to possibly predict the spread of the fire, which is spread to four different fronts. I hope to help with this and see if changes to the forest cover can also be used to track the fires. The fire was started inadvertantly in 1962 when the town was burning trash left on an abandoned coal seam. The fire continues to burn, although maybe not as hot as it once was. I was surprised to see that a few people continue to live there. I think it would be too creepy for me.
Here are some pictures that I took. I also have some of them geotagged in the Flickr viewer:
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.