Mining towns across America regularly dealt with their trash by using abandoned coal pits as landfills, when full thes would be set on fire.

And some believe this could be what triggered Centrais Leah's downfall.

They would let it burn for a while.

Then they would wash it down with water from a tanker truck.

Go away.

Everything was fine.

But in 1962 this was the first year that the dump was in this location, and so they did what they did.

You know, they let it burn, thought it was out.

But it was smoldering down in the lower depths of the garbage, and the fire spread from the garbage through an opening in the pit that went into this labyrinth of abandoned coalmines beneath the town.

And that's how the mind fire got started.

No one knows for sure how the blaze reached the cold, but it's possible that the pit hadn't been properly lined before the fire.

As the trash burned, the townsfolk didn't realize it had ignited the cold beneath it, the anthrocytes cold burned readily, and the fire smoldered underground with more coal seams beside it.

The blaze soon spread.

Geologist Dr Cynthia Ven is heading into a nearby mine to reveal just how densely packed the seams are in this region.

Wait.

Here is is a seam of coal, the orchard vain, and you can see it's it's sandwiched between like a sandy shale kind of rock above and the same below, because these veins air separated by these other rock.

If you have a lot of cracks in the rock, or if you have a very thin layer of rock between the veins and one burning vein, which gets very, very hot kind of heat through to the other.

And so you can get this sequential sort of burning of vines, they're close enough Together.

A large network of abandoned coal tunnels supplied the fire with oxygen, fueling The blaze in the high density cold lying beneath the town made matters worse.

Once the Cole is lit, it's very hard to put out, especially as it's after site cold.

In 1969 engineers attempted to prevent the fire from spreading.

The plan was to dig a trench through the scene in front of the burning coal like a firebreak in a forest.

But the blazing coals smoldered, passed before they could dig deep enough.

They hope that the fire would eventually burn out, but a decade later, the cold was still smoking.

The fire was releasing noxious gases, which were blowing towards the town.

The answer was to drill down to the burning coal and allow these gases to escape.

Away from the house Is this shows the vet pipes that were installed around us here in route right around 1980 or 1981 and the purpose of them was to pull the fire and the deadly gases away from the town of Centralia.

Fire burns.

It's oxidizing the sulfur in the pie, right?

And so you're getting sulphur dioxide from that.

You're also getting probably carbon monoxide because it's not burning completely.

There's not enough oxygen down there.

It's a real witches brew coming out of that pipe.

Uh, nasty stuff.

Nasty stuff.

Yeah, Just a few years after the vent pipes were installed, some argue that they were making things worse by feeding the fire with oxygen.

So the decision was made to seal.

But the coal seam continued to burn and pressure from noxious gases built up beneath the town.

Results were disastrous.

Roads began to swell, crack open, releasing toxic views remarkably centrally as residents continue with their daily lines.

Despite the disaster burning beneath, engineers tried again to stop the fire, and its tracks say this coal seam was on fire.

You just dig down past that whole scene all the way around and then put some kind of a non non combustible barrier on there.

And if you do that, then the coal will burn to the barrier and then quit.

Then they sort of tried that early on.

But they didn't finish the barrier.

And when they they did a couple of times in the 11 carrier, they went down and they were behind the cold, misjudged where the fire waas.

By the late seventies, having failed to prevent the fire from spreading closer to the town, residents were worn that Centralia was unsafe.

Most people stayed put until a dramatic event convinced them of a very real danger.

When Cho seems burn undergrounds, they undermine the integrity of the surface.

Frighteningly, this can result in sinkholes, opening up, revealing the booth.

That's exactly what happened on Valentine's Day 1981 when a young Todd Dombrowski was exploring his grandmother's backyard.

Right now is standing in front of the home of Todd, them basket, a young 12 year old boy that fell into the sinkhole, not saying Cole was in the backyard, which tried to get to it.

All these brambles stuff here, but it was about 30 feet back on the right.

He saw a puff of steam coming out at the base of the tree, so he went over to see why.

And when he got there, the grandest went out right from under me and opened up on steam.

Shot about 50 feet, dear.

Miraculously, the boy was hauled out by his cousin and survived.

Eventually, it attracted all new major news media in the country on the world.

Really usually a mind fire didn't cause too much attention before, but that shone a spotlight on it.

Andi, the end result was what you see now.

Everybody left by chance.

State politicians were visiting that day and witnessed the aftermath.

They insisted that the state intervene, but with the underground fire now so huge extinguishing it was no longer a viable option.

It was Centralia.

It was just finally a matter of money.

What's gonna cost more to take this huge barrier and surrounding Cole?

Just about everybody out.

So they just buy everybody up is a cheaper alternative.

I think it was 42 million in supposed to $200 million to do that remediation operation Government offered residents a substantial cash sum to leave.

But despite the cracking highways, noxious gases and sudden single, many people in Centralia were still reluctant to abandon their homes.