Shameless book promotion
It's not too late to order my book, Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire, as a holiday gift. All the online booksellers carry it, including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Buy.com. It is also available overseas, including from the Amazon.com store in the United Kingdom and from Chapters in Canada.
My book is the only comprehensive history of the underground coal mine fire that destroyed the village of Centralia, Pennsylvania, between 1962 and 1985. The Centralia story was the inspiration for the movie version of Silent Hill and for any number of novels. Today, all that remains of Centralia is about 10 houses. The other 400 or so were torn down after the residents relocated in the mid-1980s to escape the mine fire. I covered the Centralia story as a reporter for The News-item in nearby Shamokin, Pa., from 1976 to 1986. It was the central story of my journalism career.