Download or read book The West Side Carbondale Pennsylvania Mine Fire written by Kathleen Purcell Munley and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1947 residents of the west side of Carbondale, Pennsylvania began noticing a peculiar steam escaping from the ground. An investigation into this phenomenon revealed that Carbondale was slowly but steadily being destroyed by a burning inferno deep below its surface--a fire raging through the deserted anthracite coal mine shafts that twisted and turned beneath that part of the city. After several years of attempting to contain the fire by flushing, municipal leaders decided that the only sure way of eliminating the threat to the community was by digging it out. To eradicate the burning menace, hundreds of homes and buildings were purchased and destroyed, and what was once a vibrant neighborhood became an abandoned wasteland. Historian Kathleen Purcell Munley narrates here the story of this great fire, identifying its source, tracing its history, and, through personal interviews with former Carbondale residents, reveals its physical and psychological toll. The mine fire destroyed the West Side as it was, but this volume will keep its memory alive and preserve an important chapter in the history of Carbondale and Pennsylvania.

Download or read book Fire Underground written by David Dekok and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a modern-day mine disaster has turned a Pennsylvania community into a ghost town * For much of its history, Centralia, Pennsylvania, had a population of around 2,000. By 1981, this had dwindled to just over 1,000—not unusual for a onetime mining town. But as of 2007, Centralia had the unwelcome distinction of being the state’s tiniest municipality, with a population of nine. The reason: an underground fire that began in 1962 has decimated the town with smoke and toxic gases, and has since made history. Fire Underground is the completely updated classic account of the fire that has been raging under Centralia for decades. David DeKok tells the story of how the fire actually began and how government officials failed to take effective action. By 1981 the fire was spewing deadly gases into homes. A twelve-year-old boy dropped into a steaming hole as a congressman toured nearby. DeKok describes how the people of Centralia banded together to finally win relocation funds—and he reveals what has happened to the few remaining residents as the fiftieth anniversary of the fire’s beginning nears.

Download or read book The Real Disaster Is Above Ground written by J. Stephen Kroll-Smith and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1950s Centralia was a small town, like many others in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. But since the 1960s, it has been consumed, outwardly and inwardly by a fire that has inexorably spread in the abandoned mines beneath it. The earth smokes, subsides, and breathes poisonous gases. No less destructive has been the spread of dissension and enmity among the townspeople. The Real Disaster Above Ground tells the story of the fire and the tragic failure of all efforts to counter it. This study of the Centralia fire represents the most thorough canvass of the documentary materials and the community that has appeared. The authors report on the futile efforts of residents to reach a common understanding of an underground threat that was not readily visible and invited multiple interpretations. They trace the hazard management strategies of government agencies that, ironically, all too often created additional threats to the welfare of Centralians. They report on the birth and demise of community organizations, each with its own solution to the problem and its diehard partisans. The final solution, now being put into effect, is to abandon the town and relocate its people. Centralia's environmental disaster, the authors argue, is not a local or isolated phenomenon. It warns of the danger lurking in our own technology when safeguards fail and disaster management policy is not in place to respond to failure, as the examples of Chernobyl and Bhopal have clearly demonstrated. The lessons in this study of the fate of a small town in Pennsylvania are indeed sobering. They should be pondered by a variety of social scientists and planners, by all those dealing with the behavior of people under stress and those responsible for the welfare of the public.

Download or read book Unseen Danger written by David DeKok and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the Centralia mine fire; a government's indecisiveness and a town's struggle for survival.

Download or read book Outcrop and Underground Mine Fires in Allegheny County Pa written by George Wallace Grove and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Unseen Danger written by David DeKok and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Undermined in Coal Country written by Bill Conlogue and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unearthing new ways of thinking about place, pedagogy, and the environment, "On the Measures" argues that place is unstable. To study dimensions of place, the book explores two working landscapes: 1) Scranton, Pennsylvania, an undermined, former coal-mining city, and 2) Marywood University, a Scranton institution that confronts the aftermath of mining. Scranton and Marywood have endured the narrative of extraction that the Anthracite Region once celebrated. Recounting removal of parts of this place to feed other places, the story defines loss here as gain there: the city and college have suffered but the United States has grown stronger. The tale ends badly, however, because the narrative arcs toward exhaustion; the storyline offers little about renewal. Growing up with this narrative, Scrantonians have been fleeing the city for decades; the dominant trend among young people has long been to learn here to move elsewhere. Too few environmental humanists have sufficiently examined the primary place where many work: the university. When they do, they often do not link the university to its local, regional, and national environmental contexts. In exploring where Conlogue teaches, he shows how bound up places of learning are with unsettling sites of resource extraction. Defending the study of literature and history, "On the Measures" shows university students that the disciplines they study are parts of an interdisciplinary web of meaning that includes the contexts of the places where they learn"--

Download or read book Here and There written by Bill Conlogue and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-13 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global economy threatens the uniqueness of places, people, and experiences. In Here and There, Bill Conlogue tests the assumption that literature and local places matter less and less in a world that economists describe as “flat,” politicians believe has “globalized,” and social scientists imagine as a “global village.” Each chapter begins at home, journeys elsewhere, and returns to the author’s native and chosen region, northeastern Pennsylvania. Through the prisms of literature and history, the book explores tensions and conflicts within the region created by national and global demand for its resources: fertile farmland, forest products, anthracite coal, and college-educated young people. Making connections between local and global environmental issues, Here and There uses the Pennsylvania watersheds of urban Lackawanna and rural Lackawaxen to highlight the importance of understanding and protecting the places we call home.

Download or read book The Hollow Ground written by Natalie S. Harnett and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We walk on fire or air, so Daddy liked to say. Basement floors too hot to touch. Steaming green lawns in the dead of winter. Sinkholes, quick and sudden, plunging open at your feet. The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced eleven-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft. In the aftermath, decades-old secrets threaten to prove just as dangerous to the Howleys as the burning, hollow ground beneath their feet. Inspired by real-life events in Centralia and Carbondale, where devastating coal mine fires irrevocably changed the lives of residents, The Hollow Ground is an extraordinary debut with an atmospheric, voice-driven narrative and an indelible sense of place. Lovers of literary fiction will find in Harnett's young, determined protagonist a character as heartbreakingly captivating as any in contemporary literature.

Download or read book Carbondale written by James J. Racht and published by Arcadia Publishing Library Editions. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Urban Renewal November 19 20 and 21 1963 written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Banking and Currency. Subcommittee on Housing and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Freach and Keen Murders written by Kathleen P. Munley and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 1973, William J. Wright, a former patient and trustee of the Farview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, brutally murdered two teenage boys, Edmund Keen and Paul Freach, in Lackawanna County, a region that took great pride in not only its history, but its reputation as a friendly, family-oriented, safe place to live. It was a place where families could leave their doors unlocked, and be confident about allowing their children to play and explore outdoors. Yet all that would change in an instant. The brutal murders of these two boys forever altered the way people thought of this region and the safe neighborhoods they had come to take for granted. Kathleen P. Munley and Paul R. Mazzoni tell a story of unbelief, anger, and fear, but also courage and fortitude. They delve deep into the Commonwealth v. William J. Wright trial, looking inside the investigation, the trial, and how the public was impacted by this unthinkable crime. In captivating detail, the authors weave together the events of this devastating crime and remind us that, even in the pleasant light of day, evil can and does exist, and one must always be on guard.

Download or read book Fires in Abandoned Coal Mines and Waste Banks written by Ann G. Kim and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Banking and Currency and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 1024 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Community Expectations and Government Response to the Centralia Pennsylvania Coal Mine Fire Disaster written by Jane Anne Donohue and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Urban Renewal written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Banking and Currency and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Urban Renewal written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Banking and Currency. Subcommittee on Housing and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: