Mine fires in coal country are actually not all that uncommon. There are currently as many as 45 of them burning in Pennsylvania alone. Unfortunately, there’s no good way to put them out. But that doesn’t stop people from trying.
• The most effective method to extinguish such a fire is to strip mine around the entire perimeter of the blaze. That’s an expensive—and in populated areas, impractical—proposition. Essentially, it means digging an enormous trench, deep enough to get underneath the fires, which are often more than 500 feet below ground.
• An easier (but not much easier) method is to bore holes down into the old mine shafts, and then pour in tons of wet concrete to make plugs. Then more holes are drilled and flame-suppressing foam is pumped into the areas between plugs. It, too, is a very expensive project, and it doesn’t always succeed.
The cheapest way to deal with a mine fire by far is to keep an eye on it and hope it burns itself out. (One fire near Lehigh, Pennsylvania, burned from 1850 until the 1930s.) After a 1969 effort to dig out the Centralia fire proved both costly and unsuccessful, they admitted defeat and let the fire take its course. By 1980, the size of the underground blaze was estimated at 350 acres, and large clouds of noxious smoke were billowing out of the ground all over town. The ground temperature under a local gas station was recorded at nearly 1,000°F. Residents of the once-thriving mountain town began to wonder if Centralia was a safe place to live.
May Day (May 1) is celebrated as Lei Day in Hawaii.
When the boy fell in the hole and almost died, the fire beneath Centralia became a national news story. The sinkhole—caused by an effect known as subsidence, which occurs when mine shafts collapse, possibly because the support beams are on fire—put the town’s 1,600 residents in a fix. Their homes were suddenly worthless. They couldn’t sell them and move someplace safer—no one in their right mind would buy them.
The townsfolk were given a choice: a $660-million digging project that might not work, or let the government buy their homes. They voted 345 to 200 in favor of the buyout, and an exodus soon began. By 1991, $42 million had been spent buying out more than 540 Centralia homes and businesses.
GHOST TOWN
If you were to visit Centralia today, the first thing you’d notice is that there are more streets than buildings. At first glance, it would seem that someone decided to build a town, but only got as far as paving the roads. If you looked a bit closer, however, you’d notice the remnants of house foundations. Looking still closer, you’d see smoke still seeping out of the ground.
As of 2005, twelve die-hard Centralians reportedly continue to live in the smoldering ghost town. The number has dwindled since a decade ago, when nearly fifty holdouts still called it home. Experts estimate it will take 250 years for the fire to burn itself out.
* * *
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
—Abraham Lincoln
Time it: A typical spoken sentence in ordinary conversation takes about 21.2 seconds.
THE DOCTOR IS OUT (OF HIS MIND)
Got a doctor’s appointment soon? Then don’t read this. Really.
BONEHEADS In January 2004, Briana Lane suffered serious head injuries in a car crash near Salt Lake City—so serious that doctors had to remove almost half of her skull to treat the bleeding in her brain. Lane was released in February…but without the missing portion of her skull, which remained behind in the hospital freezer. The skull was due to be replaced, but the day before the surgery, the hospital canceled the appointment: they wanted to wait to see if Medicaid would pay for the procedure. In the meantime, all Lane had over her brain was a flap of skin, and she had to wear a helmet to protect it. (She said that every morning she could feel that her brain had drooped to one side during the night.) Lane finally got her skull back in April—four months after the initial operation and only, she says, after she called a local TV station and told them the story. “When you think of weird things happening to people,” she said afterward, “you don’t think of this.”
GLITTERING GLUTEUS
A patient of a hospital in Orange County, Florida, sued the facility in 2005, saying they had wrongly injected cosmetic glitter into his buttocks. The lawsuit claimed that while the patient (who happens to be an undercover policeman) was undergoing sinus surgery in 2000, he was supposed to be injected with pain medication (Demeral), but that one of the shots “felt” wrong. “There was a lot of pain,” he said, “and I complained several times that something was wrong in my buttock.” Months later, a different doctor removed from the injection site a four-inch mass that contained “green and red sparkling material.” All parties agreed that there was, in fact, glitter in the man’s buttocks. But the court found that since so much time had elapsed, it could not be determined exactly when and at what facility the glitter had been injected. Amazingly, he lost the suit.
At a steady pace of 6 mph, it would take a jogger 173 days to circle the globe.
BRAIN DECAY
A dentist in Munich, Germany, was sued after deciding to save one of his patients some time—by giving her 14 root canals in one day. The dentist, whose name was not released to the press, fed the woman large glasses of cognac between each drilling during the 12-hour ordeal, telling her it would help ease the pain. Although she probably felt no pain during the operation, she sued because of the enormous pain she suffered for weeks afterward. According to standard dental practices, 14 root canals would normally be performed in several appointments over several weeks. The dentist was ordered to pay her $7,000 in compensation.
CROUTON-GATE
It’s not the doctor that’s out of his mind in this story—it’s the hospital. In 2004 the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, England, suspended its top brain surgeon, Dr. Terence Hope, because he failed to pay for a bowl of soup and some croutons in the hospital cafeteria. The hospital had a 39-day waiting list for brain surgeries at the time. While outraged patients fumed at the hospital, the British news media had a field day over the fiasco. Hope, who had been with the hospital for 18 years and denied stealing any food, was back on the job five days later. A hospital spokesperson said that they had investigated the alleged soup-and-crouton crime, and conceded that it had been a misunderstanding.
SPIRITED TREATMENT
A couple in Bengal, India, was arrested in 2005 for treating several people with serious conditions such as appendicitis, gallstones, hernias, and tumors. Kohinoor Bibi and Majid Mandal aren’t doctors…so how did they treat their patients? By contacting “ghost doctors.” “I don’t treat the patients, the ghosts do,” said Mandal. “I am only a medium.” The couple charged about $60 for the treatments (a lot of money to the local villagers) and amassed a small fortune in their three-month run as healers. Mandal’s explanation for the exorbitant cost: “What we earn has to be shared with the ghosts—since they too have families.”
Largest wave ever surfed: Ridden by Pete Cabrinha, its face measured 70 feet high.
NUDES & PRUDES
Sometimes it seems like the world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who are offended by public nudity, and those who are offended by people who are offended by public nudity. Here are some of each.
NUDE: In June 2004 a man from Rapid City, Iowa, was robbed by strangers after he answered the door in the nude. The man, whose name was not released by police, claimed he was sleeping in the buff when he was awakened by a knock on his hotel room door. When he answered the door he was tackled by “an undisclosed number of assailants” who hit him on the head and then ran off with his wallet and pants. Police later recovered the man’s pants from the hotel parking lot; at last report the wallet was still missing.
PRUDE: A court in Karlsruhe, Germany, rejected an appeal from Dr. Peter Niehenke, a 55-year-old sex therapist who was fined $725 for indulging in his “hobby” of jogging nude near his home in Freiburg. Niehenke’s defense was that since there’s no law specifically banning him from
jogging while wearing only socks and running shoes, technically the practice is not illegal. The judge didn’t buy it. “The court,” he said in his ruling, “does not support the defendant’s view that running naked in public is one of his civil rights.”
NUDE: More nude news from Germany: In December 2004, an 81-year-old German man was robbed of 250 euros (about $300) when two young women asked him to strip naked with them and take a photograph. “After the pensioner had removed his trousers in eager anticipation, the women left in a hurry,” taking his pants and his wallet with them, a spokesperson for the Wiesbaden police department told reporters. The man’s name was withheld.
PRUDE: In January 2005, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a La Habra, California, town ordinance that required strippers to remain at least two feet away from patrons at all times was legal. The court conceded that while the ordinance did infringe on the strippers’ right to free speech, “it did not entirely ban the performers from conveying an ‘erotic message,’” so the two-foot ordinance was constitutional.
Greek gods of the four winds: Boreus (North), Notus (South), Eurus (East), Zephyrus (West).
NUDE: Police in Hillsborough, North Carolina, are on the lookout for a “hairy, big-bellied man with curly black hair” who likes to frequent a fast-food drive-through window in the buff. Police say the man has visited the same Bojangles restaurant several times over the years, but only started going nude in the summer of 2004. Before that he wore “only his underwear…or perhaps shorts that resemble underwear,” says Captain Ross Frederick of the Hillsborough Police Department.
PRUDE: In December 2004, the city of Villahermosa, Mexico, passed a law banning nudity, even within the confines of a private home. Why the law? Because the city is so hot and humid, many people have taken to walking around nude in their homes, which many find offensive. “When people walk past their windows, you see a lot of things,” says city councilwoman Blanca Pulido, who supports the new law. Penalty for being nude in your own home: 36 hours in jail or a $121 fine.
NUDE: Police at the Los Angeles International Airport arrested Neil Melly, 31, of Canada, after he stripped naked, climbed over the airport fence, ran across the airfield, and climbed into the wheel well of an airplane as it was backing away from the departure gate. Melly was mad at Qantas Airlines because it refused to sell him a ticket when he tried to pay for it with a credit card receipt instead of an actual credit card. Airport officials say they “will look into improving the fence.”
PRUDE: In the fall of 2004 the dean of students at Vermont’s Bennington College declared war against the college’s longtime unofficial policy of being “clothing optional.” Why? One student went naked during freshman orientation (when lots of parents were visiting). Dean Robert Graves decided he’d seen enough. “We don’t live in a clothing-optional society,” he told reporters. Students immediately made plans to protest the ban…in the nude. (But in the spring, after the weather improved.)
Siberia gets so cold that boiling water poured from a pan can freeze before it hits the ground.
FAMOUS DROPOUTS
Quitters never win…or do they?
ABSENT ANCHORS. Peter Jennings was a poor student in high school and only lasted until 10th grade. Tom Brokaw, the president of the student body in high school, dropped out of the University of Iowa after, as he put it, he “majored in beer and coeds for a couple of years.”
WAYWARD WRITERS. Their books are required reading in many high schools and universities, but neither Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, George Bernard Shaw, William Faulkner, nor Jack London finished school themselves.
CLASS-CUTTING COMMANDERS. U.S. presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Martin van Buren, and Grover Cleveland all had little or no formal education. British Prime Minister John Major didn’t finish high school.
FORBES-LIST FLUNKIES. Microsoft’s Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, was a college dropout. John D. Rockefeller never finished high school. Neither did Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, or Virgin’s Richard Branson. Dave Thomas of Wendy’s and Ray Kroc of McDonald’s also dropped out—but they got jobs in fast food.
ERRANT ENTERTAINERS. Robert De Niro, Humphrey Bogart, Sean Connery, Walt Disney, Quentin Tarantino, and Patrick Stewart never finished school. Musical misfits include Frank Sinatra, Elton John, and composers Irving Berlin and George Gershwin. Sonny Bono, who later became a U.S. congressman, dropped out of school in the 10th grade.
NON-PASSING PIONEERS. Wilbur and Orville Wright were dropouts. Thomas Edison left school to educate himself, as did Albert Einstein. Einstein did go back to earn a doctorate of physics in 1905, but later offered this warning: “If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.”
Because he directed the movie Kundun, Martin Scorsese is banned from Tibet.
THE BODY FARM
Ahh, Tennessee—home to Dollywood, Graceland, the Grand Ole Opry…and the world’s creepiest research facility.
PUTRIFIED FOREST
The Anthropological Research Facility (ARF) of the University of Tennessee lies on three landscaped acres behind the UT Medical Center parking lot. Aside from the razor-wire fence, it looks like a lovely wooded park, complete with people lying on their backs enjoying a pleasant day in the sun. That is, until you smell the foul odor. A second glance tells you these sunbathers are not all on their backs: some are face down in the leaves; some are waist deep in the dirt. Others are encased in concrete or wrapped in plastic garbage bags or locked in car trunks. None of them seems to be enjoying anything. Why? They’re all cadavers, planted by scientists from the University of Tennessee for the sole purpose of studying the decomposition of the human body.
Nicknamed “the Body Farm” by the FBI, this research facility develops and provides medical expertise to law enforcement professionals and medical examiners. It helps them pinpoint the exact time of death of a body—a critical part of any criminal investigation involving a cadaver.
DR. DEATH
ARF (or “BARF,” as local critics call it) was founded in 1971 by forensic anthropologist Dr. William Bass. He had been asked to guess the age of a skeleton dug up on a piece of property once owned by a Confederate Army colonel named William Shy. Bass had examined some Civil War–era remains before, but they were mostly dust. Since this skeleton still had pieces of flesh attached to it, his analysis was able to determine that the person was a white male between 24 and 28 years old, who’d been dead about a year. Bass was correct about the race, gender, and age, but way off on the time of death. The skeleton, it turned out, belonged to William Shy himself, who was buried in 1864—107 years earlier. “I realized,” Bass later recalled, “there was something here about decomposition we didn’t know.” He started the facility to help fill in the gaps.
Isuzu means “50 bells” in Japanese.
RIGOR MORTIS 101
The first corpses Bass and his team studied were bodies that had gone unclaimed at the morgue. At first they had four to five cadavers a year. Today all cadavers are donated by personal request and there’s a waiting list. ARF researchers currently work with around 45 bodies a year.
“We go through the FBI reports and come up with the most common way a perpetrator will bury someone, and use these as our models,” says Dr. Arpad Vass, a senior researcher at the facility. ARF scientists and graduate students then study the rate of algor mortis—the cooling of the body. The temperature of a corpse drops approximately 1°F per hour until it matches the temperature of the air around it—a useful clue for determining time of death. Rigor mortis—the stiffening of the body—generally starts a few hours after death and moves through the body, disappearing 48 hours later. If a body has been dead longer than three days, they look for other clues: What bugs have arrived to help with the decomposition? How old are the fly larvae? Are there beetles?
This process of insect succession (which species of insect feed on a decaying corpse, and in what order), as well as the effects of weather
and climate on decomposition, are all closely monitored and measured. The scientists use this data to develop methods and instruments that accurately establish time of death. This expertise is shared with law enforcement agencies all over the world.
WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
Dr. Vass’s research has shown that a body emits 450 chemicals at different stages of its decay. Each stage has a unique “bouquet,” which Vass has given names such as putrescine and cadaverine. Using the same aroma scan technology used in the food and wine industry, one of his students is developing a handheld electronic “nose” for the FBI that will sniff out the time of death by identifying the presence of these different chemicals in a corpse.
Synthetic putrescine and cadaverine are now used to train “human remains dogs” (not to be confused with police dogs who search for escaped criminals). These dogs respond to the specific scent of death they’ve been trained to recognize, and they do it with amazing accuracy: They can tell their trainers whether a lake is concealing a corpse by sniffing the water’s surface for minute bubbles of gas seeping from a rotting carcass underwater, and they can show police exactly where to dive to retrieve the body. The dogs can detect the faintest scent of a dead body on the ground, even if it was removed from the spot a year earlier.
Too much coffee? Snakes sleep with both eyes open.
Another researcher at ARF, Dr. Richard Jantz, has developed a computer program that can determine the gender, race, and height of an unknown skeleton. This software has been invaluable in helping forensic teams identify the victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Rwanda, and other war crime sites.
Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader Page 24