Fire underground the ong.., p.32
Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire, page 32
The selection of Burge was indeed ironic. This was the same Robert Burge who, twenty-one years earlier, had been president of Centralia Council when the dump was set on fire, subsequently igniting the mine fire. His actions or omissions and those of other members of that council, like Joseph Tighe, had played a part in getting Centralia into this tragic mess. Burge would now help lead his fellow citizens out of their fire-stricken community to better lives elsewhere.
Tighe, by contrast, had become increasingly bitter and defensive. He denied any wrongdoing, though not in a very convincing way, and vowed never to relocate, even though his house was in the 200 block of Locust Avenue, the heart of the impact zone. At the October 14 meeting with Specter, Tighe argued that onlypersons who had "legitimate" reasons should be allowed to relocate-a category he clearly did not think was very large. He said persons with high levels of mine-fire gases in their houses should be relocated, but added there were "no reports" of anyone in that predicament. It must have been a comforting delusion that Council's fire was really no problem at all.
The vote in Congress would, if favorable, almost conclude a legislative process that had begun at the previously mentioned FEMA meeting of August 4. Thornburgh had asked FEMA officials to convene a meeting of all federal agencies that might be able to fund all or part of the Centralia relocation. He did not want the relocation charged against Pennsylvania's $770 million share of the AML Fund. George Grode, Thornburgh's representative, explained why. According to Winkle's memorandum, Grode said it "would amount to a reprogramming of available funds, and thereby place the state in a position where it could not satisfy other established priorities."
It was true that Pennsylvania had $15 billion worth of abandoned mine land cleanup work ahead of it, by DERs estimate, but administration officials had described Centralia since 1981 as the worst abandoned mine land problem in the state, if not in the nation. Being number one apparently counted for nothing if one had no political clout.
Unfortunately for the governor, FEMA could see no reason why all the relocation money should not come out of the AML Fund, particularly since OSM had indicated a willingness to cooperate. None of the representatives of the other federal agencies at the meeting were optimistic they could help. It was a setback for Thornburgh, but he tried another tack. In his August 12 letter to the Pennsylvania congressional delegation, he asked them to seek a special appropriation for the relocation in the fiscal 1984 budget, which was then being prepared. This was soon given up as impractical. Few bills introduced in any given session of Congress become law: Of 12,201 introduced in the Ninety-eighth Congress (1983-84), only 2,670 would survive. Thornburgh reluctantly agreed to seek the money from the AML Fund.
Thornburgh and DeBenedictis met at the White House on September 13 with Secretary Watt and two Reagan aides, Craig Fuller and Lee Verstandig. The president himself did not attend, nor did any of his senior aides. Watt reaffirmed his willingness to provide money from the AML Fund for the relocation. Fuller and Verstandig are believed to have agreed that the Office of Management and Budget would not oppose the expenditure. They also agreed to a Thornburgh request to appoint a federal task force on Centralia. The task force met only once, for forty-five minutes on September 22, and one suspects it may have been a face-saving gesture to a Republican governor who had been denied what he wanted but who needed something to announce to the press when he came out of the meeting.
Congressman McDade, after consulting with Harrison, Murtha, Specter, Heinz, and members ofthe governor's staff, introduced a $42 million amendment to a supplemental appropriations bill on September 22. The bill had recently arrived at the Appropriations Committee and was adjudged the quickest vehicle to get the relocation money through Congress. The bill specified that the residents be paid fair market value for their homes with no penalty deducted for the mine fire. More important to the state, it specified that the $42 million would be taken off the top of the AML Fund and not charged to Pennsylvania's $770 million share, although the state would be responsible for a 10 percent matching share.
The amended bill was approved by the committee and the House and was not visibly affected by the resignation announcement of Secretary Watt on October9. But it ran into unexpected trouble in the Senate Appropriations Committee, of which Senator Specter was a member. Senator Walter Huddleston of Kentucky did not believe it was fair for the $42 million to be taken from the AML Fund but not charged to Pennsylvania's share. He feared, probably rightly, that it would mean less money for Kentucky. The bill was debated in committee on October 19. Specter left the hearing to vote on a bill making a federal holiday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and did not return immediately. After the voting recess, Huddleston amended the bill. Now not only would the state have to pay 10 percent of the $42 million from its own funds, but the remainder would come out of the state's $770 million share of the AML Fund.
Huddleston's amendment mayhave increased the cost of the project to Pennsylvania taxpayers, but its simple justice cannot be denied. Taking the funds off the top would mean that other states besides Pennsylvania would pay for a majority of the relocation. Pennsylvania bore a major share of the responsibility for allowing the fire to grow to almost uncontrollable size. It was only right that the state be made to pay.
The bus rolled through Harrisburg, past Baltimore, and then was in Washington. "On the way we where told they had added more [to the bill] and it had to go back again," Theresa Gasperetti said. "When we got there, we were really down in the dumps."
During the legislative process, other amendments had been hung on the bill, eventually making the $42 million for Centralia a small, uncontroversial part of the whole. One amendment added almost $9 billion for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Reagan administration strongly supported the amendment for the IMF, but a significant number of members of Congress did not. Many of the Centralians confused the IMF with the MX missile, an understandable error. To this day, many insist it was funding for the MX missile that almost spoiled their big day.
Speaker of the House Thomas P. O'Neill, aware of Harrison's interest in the supplemental appropriations bill, appointed him to chair the House when the bill came up for debate and vote.
Harrison's staff met the bus from Centralia and immediately began making apologies. It was far from certain the House would even begin debate on the bill that day. The group was taken on a brief tour of the Capitol and then to lunch. While they were eating, word came that debate had abruptly begun. They hurried to the visitor's gallery of the House. Harrison saw them enter and made a quick trip upstairs to brief the Centralians on what would happen. Later he explained:
I thought that unless they'd been carefully briefed on what was going on, they would think this was very strange. They had come down here to hear a debate on whether they should get some money to relocate.
Instead, they heard this violent debate about the debt crisis in Argentina and international bankers. By then, Centralia was a consensus part of the bill. Nobody was going to rip it out. The question was whether the bill passed or failed, and that question really revolved around how bitterly the people were opposed to the IMF.
Sister Murphy remembers the vote on the bill as being a "panicky time:' Members of the House voted electronically; a green star next to a name on the tally board meant a yes vote. A red star meant no. The voting was "nip and tuck" for a long time, she recalls.
Theresa Gasperetti was a bundle of nerves, afraid the bill would not pass and she would be confined to the impact zone forever. She saw green stars light up beside the names of Harrison, McDade, and Murtha. Then she was dismayed to see a red star light up beside the name of Gus Yatron (D-Reading, Pennsylvania), who represented a neighboring district and was well-known to all of them. His vote-apparently against the IMF rather than Centralia-left the Centralians confused and angry. It was a sobering lesson that not everyone considered their plight a top priority. Harrison's groundwork in the House and Specter's in the Senate had made the relocation possible. It was not a gift.
In the end they won, 226 to 186. Gasperetti grabbed herself to suppress a shriek of delight, which was forbidden in the visitor's gallery. Later Tom Larkin, former president of Concerned Citizens, said, "More than anything, I felt relieved that after several years of pushing for something, that something was finally achieved. By this time, I myself had realized they weren't going to do anything about the fire itself." Joan Girolami recalls feeling relieved the money had been approved "before someone died." She considered all that she and the others had done to bring about this day to have been worthwhile. "It was a shame we had to go through so much, and give up so much;' she added. Rose Marquardt, who joined CHA after her falling-out with the Unity Task Force over the petition, felt both happy and sad. "You had a feeling that, thank God it's over, but then you had a feeling that this is the beginning of the end;' she said.
Harrison aide Ron Ungvarsky escorted the Centralians out of the gallery to a previously planned celebration on the steps of the Capitol. Along the way he introduced them to whomever they met so they could revel in their temporary celebrity. No citizen group who comes to the Capitol with a large contingent of the press remains anonymous for very long. On the steps, former members of Concerned Citizens-Larkin, Girolami, Eva and Joe Moran, Eleanor O'Hearn, Mary McGinley, and Gasperetti-cut a red ribbon to celebrate their approaching freedom from the mine fire.
N TRUTH, THE CENTRALIA RELOCATION GOT UNDERWAY EVEN BEFORE Congress approved the $42 million. A small army of workers from the state Department of Community Affairs, Columbia County Redevelopment Authority, and OSM arrived in Centralia on August 17, 1983, to begin work on a crash survey of which families were inclined to leave Centralia and how much it might cost to acquire the approximately five hundred remaining homes and other properties in the town.
They were led by Jack Carling, disaster programs director for DCA, who from the sidelines had observed the Centralia drama for several years. He was a Scranton native who started his career on a local project to help a neighborhood threatened by mine subsidence and later worked on the Eynon Street Mine Fire Project in Scranton. More recently, Carling had handled the relocation of the village of Robindale in western Pennsylvania after a disastrous flood in 1977. He loved disaster work and was well suited for it: He was friendly, compassionate, good-humored, and slow to anger, qualities in short supply among many of the public officials Centralia had known in the preceding twenty-one years.
Carling would need these virtues to defuse the anger and fear remaining from OSM's administration of the 1981 relocation. At least this time Congress would ban the hated "mine fire penalty" of 20 percent deducted from appraisals in 1981. Byrnesville was included in his survey despite the professed sentiment there for a flushing project that would leave them an island above a sea of fire. DERhad decided flushing had little chance to protect the small village. He thought government should have declared eminent domain and moved everyone out of Centralia rather than having departure be voluntary, but those were the rules set by the Thornburgh administration.
When the survey was completed, 391 property owners had declared an interest in having their property appraised for the relocation, and just 76 refused appraisals, a number that would steadily drop. Carling estimated the cost of the relocation at $41,831,000, a sum that included acquisition of four churches, a parochial school, and several businesses, including a complete garment factory.
For some families with children in the impact zone, such as the Gasperettis and Koguts, choosing relocation was anything but voluntary. The continuing threat of poisonous gas and subsidence made their departure mandatory. Many families outside the impact zone chose relocation because they feared living near a trench project for as long as five years. DER Secretary Nicholas DeBenedictis said this surprised him, but there was little doubt among the silent majority of Centralians-those who were not part of Joan Girolami's circle or Helen Womer's group, who tended to be more skeptical-that DER intended to dig that trench. Whether it ran through the middle of Centralia or west of the village made little difference. The blasting and truck traffic and dust would make their lives miserable.
One couple who eventually chose relocation for that reason were William and Janet Birster, who had fled their home on Wood Street in 1969 after the mine-fire gases inside rose to dangerous levels. The Birsters had relocated to a house on West Park Street. It was in the ultimate path of the fire, but far enough away, they believed, so the fire would never again disrupt their lives. They were wrong. "The trench was proposed for this end of town," Birster said. "We don't know just where.... When they start ripping it up, it's just as good to go as to be choked when they're digging. Going along with the tide, really."
Even after the referendum, DER left little doubt that trenching was a sure thing. Press Secretary Bruce Dallas was quoted by the Associated Press on August 13, 1983, as saying there would be no use of eminent domain in Centralia "except possibly in a few, isolated instances, for example, in the immediate trenching area." The story, which was carried in the News-Item, made other references to the certainty of a trench as well. They just didn't say when it would be dug.
Helen Womer and other opponents of "tearing the town apart" did not give up their fight after the relocation vote on August 11 went overwhelmingly against them. They turned their attention to trying to stop both a trench and a relocation by appealing to elected officials and bureaucrats to see things their way. Womer sent a letter to Governor Thornburgh a week after the vote telling him, An emergency, crises, or disaster does NOT exist to support relocation funding."62 Her group, although the formal leader was Father Anthony McGinley, began calling itself "Residents to Save Centralia." It put out a "Centralia Fact Sheet" on September 2,63 arguing among other things that the supposed majority vote for relocation on August 11 really wasn't a majority when non-voters and the excluded Byrnesville voters were included. They accused Thornburgh of using the trench threat as a scare tactic, and again tried to argue that temperatures proved the mine fire was not really under Centralia. The pamphlet made no mention of the poisonous gases or subsidences that threatened many in the impact zone, but did proclaim the group's interest in "preserving the historical, spiritual, and cultural values we have in Centralia." Their efforts, which ultimately came to naught, caused dread among the families who wanted to get away from the gas and subsidence threat. No one knew whether the federal government would seize upon their protests as an excuse to do nothing.
At the state level, certainly, their protests had little impact. Patrick J. Solano, a DER deputy secretary, responded to Womer's letter to Thornburgh noting that her opinion that no serious problem existed in Centralia "is contrary to the opinion of professionals who have thoroughly evaluated the data and have studied the problem at Centralia ... we will be guided in making a decision by the GAI Report."
Another regular writer who disputed the need for a trench or relocation was George P. Lokitis, a former miner and small mine operator who lived at 108 West Park Street. He wasn't leaving and neither was his son, John Lokitis, who lived in a modern home at the very end of East Park Street. But another son, George Jr., and his wife MaryEllen, did leave the impact zone, because they had small children. John's own son, John Lokitis Jr., grew up listening to his grandfather and father rail against Centralia's fate, and vowed never to leave.
Whenever possible, Bill Klink, executive director of the Columbia County Housing and Redevelopment Authority, hired veteran disaster workers for the Centralia relocation, people who had worked relocations elsewhere in the state and who understood the range of emotions they would encounter. "You really do have to have patience;' Klink said in a 2009 interview. "You have to try as best you can, knowing that people are under a lot of stress ... and may not always be so pleasant. This is a tough decision for some people."
Public meetings in Centralia to explain the mechanics of the relocation began in January 1984, and the first nineteen offers to acquire homes went out May 18. The first families to actually leave were Charles and Theresa Gasperetti and their children and Margaret Chapman and her family. Governor Thornburgh put out a statement on May 29 wishing them well. The goal was to have the relocation completed by the end of December 1986.
Centralia homeowners were presented the higher of two appraisals of their houses and had up to a year to decide whether to accept. In 1981 the initial time period had been ten days. Those who were dissatisfied, and there were a few, were entitled to a hearing before an administrative law judge appointed by the state Department of Community Affairs. There was no charge for the hearing, although if the owner wanted a lawyer to present his case, the expense was his own. Owners still dissatisfied after the hearing could make a final appeal to the secretary of Community Affairs.
If they had trouble finding a new home, they could sell the house to the redevelopment authority, bank the money, and rent the house back until they found suitable relocation housing. Interest payments were almost enough to cover the rent. Departing homeowners were permitted to salvage virtually anything from their house at no cost, and many stripped their houses of siding, energy-efficient windows, kitchen cupboards, and the like. Klink and Carling believed it may have been the most generous disaster relocation in American history.
Most Centralians, as it turned out, didn't want to move very far from Centralia. Most wanted to stay in the Mount Carmel-Kulpmont area, where they had friends and family and their children wouldn't have to change high schools. Nearly four times as many chose to resettle within an eight-mile radius of Centralia than picked homes farther out, in an eight to twentyfive-mile radius. Demand began boosting prices, and available homes often needed renovations to the point where building a new house wouldn't have been that much more expensive.
