Remember the huge mulch fire of Helotes, Texas I wrote about a while back? Well, I hate to divert attention away from what is surely the biggest thing to hit the small hill country town, but I ran across another fire — this one in central Pennsylvania — that’s been burning for a little bit longer and stronger than the one in Helotes: try 45 years!
Yeah. An underground coal fire started in 1962, and became so bad over the next twenty years that in 1984 the entire town of Centralia, Pennsylvania had to be evacuated. Today, the fire stretches along an 8 mile seam in the ground, where enough coal lies below “to fuel it for 250 years,” according to Wikipedia.
So remember, Helotes: things could be worse.
[via neatorama]