Fire Underground
The Ongoing Tragedy Of The Centralia Mine Fire
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Narrated by:
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Eddie Frierson
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By:
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David DeKok
About this listen
How an underground fire turned a Pennsylvania community into a ghost town. On May 27, 1962, a fire set to clean up the town dump outside Centralia, Pennsylvania, spread by accident into abandoned coal mines beneath the small town. This spawned the environmental disaster known around the world today as the Centralia Mine Fire.
Journalist David DeKok, the author of this book, reported on the mine fire from 1976-86, when the fire was at its peak. Clouds of steam rose from the earth and the ground could collapse without warning, as it did on Valentine's Day of 1981, nearly killing a 12-year-old boy, Todd Domboski.
That the fire reached this critical mass was due to years of government incompetence. The early projects by the state of Pennsylvania in 1962-63 to stop the fire all ran out of money before the job could be done. The U.S. Bureau of Mines built an underground barrier in the late 1960s to keep the fire out of Centralia, but it began failing by the mid-1970s. A misguided decision by the federal government in 1978 to close a vent pit left open by the state in 1963 to pull the fire away from Centralia sealed the town's doom.
As the fire worsened, Centralia's people - some of whose families had been there for five generations - struggled with the daily reality of clanging gas alarms and sick children. They began to fight among themselves over what to do. In 1983, as the world watched, they voted 2-1 to accept a federal government offer to relocate all of them. By 2000, all but a half dozen of the thousand who had lived there in 1980 were gone, along with their homes and churches.
Centralia exists mainly in memory today. Nature is reclaiming the blocks where homes once stood. Tourists come from around the world to see the town with the underground fire and especially the wrecked highway, split open by that fire. It was a tragedy that did not have to happen.
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By: Nick Taylor
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Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster
- By: Susan Stranahan, David Lochbaum, The Union of Concerned Scientists, and others
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.
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Internal workings of the NRC
- By Eduards J. Vucins on 05-11-14
By: Susan Stranahan, and others
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The Crusades of Cesar Chavez
- A Biography
- By: Miriam Pawel
- Narrated by: Jackson Gutierrez
- Length: 21 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the first comprehensive biography of Chavez, Miriam Pawel offers a searching yet empathetic portrayal. Chavez emerges here as a visionary figure with tragic flaws; a brilliant strategist who sometimes stumbled; and a canny, streetwise organizer whose pragmatism was often at odds with his elusive, soaring dreams.
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Cesar Chávez
- By Ed on 09-10-18
By: Miriam Pawel
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Bushwhacked
- Life in George W. Bush's America
- By: Molly Ivins, Lou Dubose
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In their second book on our current White House occupant, Ivins and Dubose take the wire brush to the Bush presidency and show how he has applied the same flawed strategies he used in governing Texas to running the largest superpower in the world.
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Richly informative & entertaining...
- By Native Texan on 10-29-03
By: Molly Ivins, and others
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The Path Between the Seas
- The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 31 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. McCullough expertly weaves the many strands of this momentous event into a captivating tale.
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No Stone Unturned
- By Tim on 06-25-13
By: David McCullough
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The Chain
- Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food
- By: Ted Genoways
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point. Along the way, he exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant labor.
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Great Writing, Performance and Content
- By Kevin S. Grail on 09-29-19
By: Ted Genoways
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Meet You in Hell
- Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership that Transformed America
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, and the bloody steelworkers' strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation. Frick's reply: "Tell him that I'll meet him in hell."
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an extended journalistic tour
- By D. Littman on 06-08-05
By: Les Standiford
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Cadillac Desert, Revised and Updated Edition
- The American West and Its Disappearing Water
- By: Marc Reisner
- Narrated by: Joe Spieler, Kate Udall
- Length: 27 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruptions and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecologic and economic disaster. In Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants to transform the West.
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Too much mouth noise in narration
- By AES on 07-23-19
By: Marc Reisner
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Colossus
- Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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As breathtaking today as when it was completed, Hoover Dam ranks among America's greatest achievements. The story of its conception, design, and construction is the story of the United States at a unique moment in history: when facing both a global economic crisis and the implacable elements of nature, we prevailed.
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A Political Biography of the Dam
- By Roy on 02-20-11
By: Michael Hiltzik
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Dark Sun
- The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Richard Rhodes
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
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Richard Rhodes' landmark history of the atomic bomb won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in this majestic new masterpiece of history, science, and politics, he tells for the first time the secret story of how and why the hydrogen bomb was made, and traces the path by which this supreme artifact of 20th-century technology became the defining issue of the Cold War.
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Abridged??
- By Delano on 04-17-13
By: Richard Rhodes
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The Woman Behind the New Deal
- The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
- By: Kirstin Downey
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the 20th century. Based on extensive archival materials, new documents, and exclusive access to Perkins' family members and friends, this biography is the first complete portrait of a devoted public servant with a passionate personal life, a mother who changed the landscape of American business and society.
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An Absorbing Biography
- By Jean on 08-16-17
By: Kirstin Downey
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109 East Palace
- Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
- By: Jennet Conant
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
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They were told as little as possible. Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace.
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Great Listen
- By John H. Davis III on 10-22-05
By: Jennet Conant
What listeners say about Fire Underground
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-24-17
Truth is stranger than fiction!!!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
It was a story that I knew nothing about before listening to the audio book.
Have you listened to any of Eddie Frierson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I love the narrator, Eddie Frierson who makes the book come alive.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The tragedy of the entire situation moved me throughout the book.
Any additional comments?
Very well researched.
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- Reggie
- 01-07-19
A town slams its head against the wall for 30 year
The story of a poor town and 30 years worth of ineffectual government officials not having the courage to tell the people of Centralia, "yes, you are correct. No one gives a sh*t about your town."
I gave this book 4 stars, because DeKok does a nice job, but really, it's not 4-star story. It's page after page of people slamming their head against the wall; white entitlement; government ineptitude; a pinch of greed and a dash of mental illness and a slice of high drama.
How does something moderately horrible simmer for 30 years? This is that story.
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- Nancy & Greg
- 05-05-23
Comprehensive account of Centralia, PA''s demise
This detailed and comprehensive account of the mine fire that ended the town of Centralia, PA is probably the only work one needs to listen to on this subject. It is so complete that it can be overwhelming in its detail. The story, historically, politically, and its impact on human life is not unlike the story of Love Cannal, NY. People get sick. politicians ignore them, concerned residents speak up and the government finally steps in to help. That is a summary that applies to both towns. Excellent narration helps move the story along.
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