Centralia mine fire

The town's four cemeteries—including one on the hilltop which has smoke rising around and out of it—are maintained in good condition.

The Centralia Municipal Building still stands, along with its attached fire station garage. By the early 2010s, the building had fallen into disrepair, but new siding was installed in 2012.[44] The building hosts the annual Centralia Cleanup Day, when volunteers collect illegally dumped trash in the area. Although past cleanup days avoided fire-imp... See more

In April 2020, amidst the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the property's current owners made the decision to cover over the graffiti on the highway section of old Route 61. Several hundred mounds of dirt were laid over the area, thus ending a decades-long fascination with the desolate stretch of road.[32] Google Maps overhead satellite-view im... See more

The remaining church in the borough, the town's Ukrainian Catholic church, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, remains in use. It holds weekly services on Sundays and attracts worshippers from surrounding towns including people who were once residents of the town. It has not yet been directly affected by the fire. A geological survey found t... See more

Its population declined from 1,000 in 1980 to five residents in 2020[8] because a coal mine fire has been burning beneath the borough since 1962.