![]() ![]() Helen Womer worked as cashier at the local bank. As sure as the sun rose every morning, John Coddington sold gas at his Amoco station. ![]() Everywhere, you heard it: "Centralia was a nice little town." Before the fire, Centralia was a town where people lived out their lives content to marry, raise children, go to church, fix up grandma's house, and grow old, just like their ancestors who first settled into this northern bend of the Appalachian Mountains in 1855 and incorporated Centralia Borough in February 1866. And this fire, this slow-burning fire, killed Centralia, Pennsylvania. The fire that simply dropped out of sight twenty-four years ago still burns. Indeed, the whistle that one day pierced the lives of some one thousand Centralia residents has never been silenced. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church and sang proudly: "This town is your town/ This town is my town/ Don't let Cen-tral-i-a/ burn forever." Years later that the members of the local chapter of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union unfurled an American flag in the St. Years later that a twelve-year-old boy fell into a hole of three-hundred-degree heat that opened up before him on Valentine's Day in the backyard of his grandmother's home. It was years later that the government placed ticking, black boxes in Centralia homes to monitor the carbon monoxide escaping from the underground fire. It took years, decades in fact, for the people of Centralia to realize that the ominous whistle blast they heard that spring day had anything to do with the dramatic changes in their lives. And as the tunnels flowed, so spread the fire. As the men returned to their work, the smoldering fire was already spreading to a coal seam that lay in the ground below the open pit, a black river of coal that would gradually lead the fire into a massive honeycomb of underground mine tunnels, tunnels deep and thick and rich in anthracite coal that criss-crossed under the streets of Centralia. What no one knew that day in Centralia, though, was that the fire still burned. When they heard the whistle, volunteer firemen and borough workers rushed to the abandoned mining pit, where they quickly shoveled clay and hosed water onto the flames to extinguish the fire. For several years the pit had been used as a garbage dump. The whistle sounded that spring day in May 1962 because someone had spotted flamed flicking up out of the old mining pit, the one on the southeast side of town, just below Odd Fellows Cemetery. The whistle rang out from the town's fire station and echoed back and forth across the valley and up and down the main street, Locust Avenue. It sounded long and shrill, a warning to the residents of this obscure Pennsylvania mining borough that something was wrong. Slow Burn is a compelling story about-and for-all of us.” -Shelby Lee AdamsĪ whistle blew the day the fire started in Centralia. ![]() Renée Jacobs faithfully and compassionately documents in pictures and words the confusion, uncertainty, and fighting spirit of Centralia’s residents-and the painful destruction and relocation of the residents of this little Pennsylvania town. ![]() “The human spirit doesn’t want to believe, see, or hear what can destroy our sanctified special places in the world. It’s the unseen, slow-moving nature of this underground burning that took Centralia apart. From Todd Domboski’s account of falling into a dangerous hole in his grandmother’s backyard to Helen Womer’s decision to stay in Centralia no matter what happens, this book is filled with stories of courage in the face of an invisible enemy.” - Publishers Weekly “A somber and darkly fascinating portrait of the community as it fights to save itself.” - Small Town “Where once there was familiarity with open doors and trusting hearts, in a community that could be your home anywhere in America, an invisible cancer grew. I wish the future of Centralia were as assured as the future of many of these revealing, heart-rending, eloquent and persuasive images.” -Victoria Donohoe, Philadelphia Inquirer “Jacobs tells the story of the fire and recounts, in poignant interviews and photographs, the residents’ tough choice between staying and resettling. Franklin, New York Times Book Review “These are rapidly made ‘decisive moment’ 35mm photos in the Cartier-Bresson tradition of photojournalism-a very worthy effort that has led to a book, Slow Burn. “The gallery of stark Works Progress Administration–style photographs by Renée Jacobs portrays with poignancy a Welsh, Irish, and Slavic Roman Catholic community as it once was, poised in stubborn bewilderment.” -Ben A. ![]()
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