Not many people can claim hell as their birthplace.
But Todd Domboski and the few thousand former residents of Centralia, Pennsylvania, come closest to that distinction.
Signs warn visitors of the dangers of death by suffocation or being swallowed by the ground, but the old mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, was once home to more than 1,000 people.
Now it is nothing more than a smoldering ghost town that has been burning for half a century.
It started with a fire that was intentionally set to burn out a landfill for Labor Day in 1962.
The problem was that the dump was also an old mine connected to a maze of abandoned underground mine tunnels full of coal.
Although the city managed to extinguish the fire above ground, a much larger inferno burned beneath it, eventually making its way under the city center of Centralia.
The fire was so widespread, destructive, and endless—it is said that there is enough coal underground to stoke the fire for another 250 years.
- that in 1980 a $42 million plan prompted most residents to move (most houses were demolished), leaving only about a dozen survivors behind.