city of flames

[erf_]

Centralia is still burning.

Comments

[asimovfan]

Huh, I was actually reading about this not too long ago, but I can't find the article. It was a pretty good one, about all the debate and worry in the town, culminating in a decision to leave when a kid was almost swallowed up by a sinkhole. And then the government stepped in and bought all the now-worthless houses so the whole town could move.

Oh well have an article about ghost towns around the world instead?
http://www.oddee.com/item_96462.aspx

[erf_]

oh man I so want to go to that one in Taiwan

and I'd heard about Prypiat and Gunkanjima from video games, and read about Famagusta in The World Without Us, but the Kowloon Walled City, wow! I'd seen so many crappy Hong Kong action films set there, and never realized how much more surreal the reality was than the fiction.

And those photos of Kolmanskop are astounding.

[user_undefined]

Yeah. I've been there. For work.

There are mine fires like that all over the country - hundreds - but they're in slightly more remote locations and/or haven't hollowed out under towns, so they're less publicized. It's not like nobody's trying to put them out, either. They've spent the money. It's just that nothing works.

[user_undefined]

The reason Centralia is so... famous? Is that a major highway runs through it.

[erf_]

As in literally been there? What was it like?

[user_undefined]

Yes, literally. Smoke comes out of huge, long cracks in the ground, and it smells awful, but you have to stay away from the cracks. There's a lot of subsidence (like, pits in the ground where it's hollowed underneath and then collapsed). It's an extremely sobering place to visit. Sometimes humanity fucks something up so hard it is nigh impossible to unfuck - such is the state of mine fires, as well as mine drainage.