CENTRALIA, Pa. – Standing before the wreckage of his bulldozed home, John Lokitis Jr. felt sick to his stomach, certain that a terrible mistake had been made.
He’d fought for years to stay in the house. It was one of the few left standing in the moonscape of Centralia, a once-proud coal town whose population fled an underground mine fire that began in 1962 and continues to burn.
But the state had ordered Lokitis to vacate, leaving the fourth-generation Centralian little choice but to say goodbye — to the house, and to what’s left of the town he loved.
“I never had any desire to move,” said Lokitis, 39. “It was my home.”
After years of delay, state officials are now trying to complete the demolition of Centralia, a borough in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania that all but ceased to exist in the 1980s after the mine fire spread beneath homes and businesses, threatening residents with poisonous gases and dangerous sinkholes.
The story of Centralia is seriously incredible. You need to Wikipedia it if you’ve never heard of it.