All they wanted to do was get rid of the garbage, so it's hard to fault them for what was

about to happen.

Given the chance to live life in their shoes for a day or two, I doubt it would have come

out any other way for us.

The town had taken over an old strip mine in early 1962 and repurposed it as a landfill,

which was admittedly a good thing.

The number of unofficial landfills had popped up around the town and they were hoping

this would clean things up a bit.

But this new official landfill sat right up against a cemetery and people were starting

to complain about the mess, so the town council met and planned the cleanup.

On May 27th of 1962, someone working for the town struck a match and set the whole pile

of trash on fire.

But there was a problem, a big lurking, underground problem.

That landfill, you see, was directly on top of an abandoned coal mine, and coal, as we

all know, has a tendency to burn when you add fire.

They tried putting the fire out, of course.

They tried digging it out, pouring in wet sand and cutting off the oxygen supply, the

fire needed to burn.

But nothing worked.

The fire just kept burning, and as it did, it started to transform the town above it.

The over the decade since the fire was set, the population of roughly 1,000 townsfolk has

all but vanished.

...