Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#21

Post by themaninthedark »

John23832 wrote: post #18
zzzeek wrote: post #16

so how do you put that fire out? or was "So now, people like Phil assume that the government is just waiting them out. Once they’re gone, putting out the fire will be easy enough" referring to how the locals think the government is just pretending they can't fix the problem?

You can't. The coal seam is literally smoldering.

You might be able to, however not easily like when you put out a simple structure fire.

The ground is riddled with small vents that allow oxygen in. If you were to inject a foaming agent and then flood the space you could eventually lower the temperature below the auto ignition temperature.

Might not be easy. Might not be cost effective right now.

But there is a reason that Pagnotti Enterprises bought the land and I doubt it is because they are looking at turning it into a nature reserve.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#22

Post by phyzome »

Vaslo wrote: post #8
phyzome wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only one explicit reference to capitalism.

Also a comparison to Chernobyl (which no one would ever think they were anywhere near related.). Clearly the author wanted to communicate “something” more than the interesting takeover by nature.

I would agree that the root cause analysis of these two disasters is pretty different, and not super related to capitalism. But I don't think they were really trying to push that connection.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#24

Post by thejarren »

I grew up in Pennsylvania and have visited Centralia a few times over the years. When I was younger, I remember being able to see smoke rise from the ground, but in recent years, I haven’t seen anything almost as if the fire has subsided a bit.

Pennsylvania is filled with old coal mining towns, and most of them are in a state of decay. Towns like Pottsville, Pennsylvania have buildings crumbling down on their main streets.

If anything, I think Centralia is representative of where these other towns could be in 50 to 100 years, assuming people move to larger communities. Barring the fire under the ground, of course.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#25

Post by mikkupikku »

themaninthedark wrote: post #21
John23832 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't. The coal seam is literally smoldering.

You might be able to, however not easily like when you put out a simple structure fire. The ground is riddled with small vents that allow oxygen in. If you were to inject a foaming agent and then flood the space you could eventually lower the temperature below the auto ignition temperature. Might not be easy. Might not be cost effective right now. But there is a reason that Pagnotti Enterprises bought the land and I…

As far as I've been able to determine, Pagnotti Enterprises has owned land in that area for a very long time and has no apparent plans to mine there anytime soon. They got this new bit of land because the state renounced the right of way and sold it to the owners of the adjacent land. This wasn't a huge meaningful investment to Pagnotti, but they did get rid of the ruined road itself, probably because it was a tourist attraction and a lawyer said to get rid of it.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#26

Post by closewith »

imajoredinecon wrote: post #9

Neat read on the whole, but was fun to see how huge the author believes Estonia is: > When Estonia, for example, became independent of the Soviet Union, some 245 million square miles of collectivist farmlands were simply abandoned.

Common enough error in the US when dealing with square meters abbreviated to sq m. Only off but a factor of 2.6 million.

But yes, it does call into question the rest of the fact checking.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#27

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

closewith wrote: post #26
imajoredinecon wrote: post #9

Neat read on the whole, but was fun to see how huge the author believes Estonia is: > When Estonia, for example, became independent of the Soviet Union, some 245 million square miles of collectivist farmlands were simply abandoned.

Common enough error in the US when dealing with square meters abbreviated to sq m. Only off but a factor of 2.6 million. But yes, it does call into question the rest of the fact checking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia Area • Total 45,335 km2 (17,504 sq mi)

Some people are just oblivious to six orders of magnitude mistakes, and then go off about "folly, mistake, calamitous hubris, neglect, and plain stupidity" ...

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#28

Post by closewith »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #27
closewith wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common enough error in the US when dealing with square meters abbreviated to sq m. Only off but a factor of 2.6 million. But yes, it does call into question the rest of the fact checking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia Area • Total 45,335 km2 (17,504 sq mi) Some people are just oblivious to six orders of magnitude mistakes, and then go off about "folly, mistake, calamitous hubris, neglect, and plain stupidity" ...

Assuming this is about Harju, it seems the author read "245 million sq m" and assumed the m was miles, not metres.

So the already large 24,500 hectare farm became a ludicrous 245 million square mile multi-planetary behemoth.

Reading sq m as square miles is a surprisingly common error in the US, but usually gets caught before production or publication because the result is orders of magnitude out.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#29

Post by dmd »

boothby wrote: post #17
orsorna wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To convert that figure to a more relatable number: the surface area of the Earth is just about 197 million square miles. With such an error I'm having a hard time trusting the article content.

Technically, if you're measuring surface area, it' important to remember that the earth is not a sphere. There's a bit of a paradox measuring shorelines: the shorter your ruler, the longer it gets, because you're able to capture more complex features. Pethaps the authors took an extremely precise measurement of the surface of Estonia, counting everything down to the sinus cavities of dogs sleeping in alleys...

Area isn’t notably affected by fractal boundaries. Only perimeter is.

Re: The Rebirth of Pennsylvania's Infamous Burning Town

#30

Post by boothby »

dmd wrote: post #29
boothby wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, if you're measuring surface area, it' important to remember that the earth is not a sphere. There's a bit of a paradox measuring shorelines: the shorter your ruler, the longer it gets, because you're able to capture more complex features. Pethaps the authors took an extremely precise measurement of the surface of Estonia, counting everything down to the sinus cavities of dogs sleeping in alleys...

Area isn’t notably affected by fractal boundaries. Only perimeter is.

Can you explain this more? It seems trivial to extrude a 2d coastline along a third dimension to produce a paradoxical areal calculation corresponding precisely to the perimeter paradox...
Post reply on HN