Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 23 | Centralia: The Ghost Town That Won’t Die w/ Crime To Burn | Sasquatch & Sourdough

Transcript

Ep. 23 | Centralia: The Ghost Town That Won’t Die w/ Crime To Burn | Sasquatch & Sourdough · Sasquatch & Sourdough

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Sasquatch and Sourdough, a podcast where we embark on a journey into the depths of the unknown.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: History of life.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: Weaving together threads of ancient scripture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: Biblical.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: Tales of high strangeness.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: Tell them about the twenty.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: Whether you're a seeker of truth.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: We believe it's the heart of the house.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: We're simply hungry for a good street.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: What about the twinkle?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: That squadron's hourdown invites you to join us on a journey of discovery, wonder, and delicious.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: They fill your methods, your theory, sir?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: So grab your backpack and sharpen your senses.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: And prepare to explore the sacred mysteries of our highly strange world like never before.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that is the whole problem with alien.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, April.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy that you're here.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: April and I have been chatting on Instagram for like many months.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Many months.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if you guys follow, you should be following us on Instagram.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you will notice that I'm always like reposting her stuff to our stories because I just absolutely love her podcast.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You just um I so I love a good, I love a good crime drama, I love a good murder mystery.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this is definitely gonna be a little bit different of an episode, but I don't think I mean my audience really they don't they don't care anymore.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're just they know we're gonna do something weird.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so your podcast is so different because I it's just it's arson and it's people people setting people on fire.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I when I decided to do a true crime podcast initially, um I wanted to do one for a while, but it it's such a saturated market that I was like, what is it that I could actually bring to the table that other people aren't bringing to the table?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously it, and it it's a little embarrassing how long it took for me to think of it.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I am a fire expert.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've been a fire protection engineer for over 20 years, and I was a firefighter briefly.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought I can bring the perspective of a fire expert to criminal fire cases.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And not all criminal fire cases are arson.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's also fires that have really large losses of life and really large um property losses that are the result of criminal negligence and not just arson.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we cover all kinds of criminal fires, not just intentional arson.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: That is such a cool job for one.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: It has its days though, like every job.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for your your service, because that's obviously an amazing service that you are providing.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm definitely the kind of person, at least in our house, that like I'm like unplugging everything and I'm like, that's good, that's a fire hazard, fire.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because my dad was a high voltage electrician for BGE for a long time.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So everything was like, that's a fire hazard, and don't sit on the green boxes outside because they can blow up.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just like kind of waiting for things to blow up and set on fire as a kid.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely appreciate your expertise.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's funny is that I'm the fire protection engineer, but my husband is the one that buys all of the fire extinguishers and makes sure there's one like basically every 10 feet through our house.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can't you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a fire extinguisher in our house.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so he's definitely um when he moved in with me at our old house, I think I had like two fire extinguishers and and they were really old, and he was horrified.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, What kind of fire protection engineer are you?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so he stocked us up.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: We have fire extinguishers all over the place now.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's like your safety patrol.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: He is.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: He makes sure that I do a good job.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Although he does joke that I'm such a good fire protection engineer that I have trouble lighting our wood stove.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he's not wrong.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about like kindling, right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, that's the thing is like usually if I have to light the wood stove, it's because I was supposed to put logs in it and I forgot, and so I've let it burn down too far, and then you've only just got like a few coals left, and I'm like, oh, we can start it from that and I'll just dump like logs that are too big.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm really bad at like I just think everything can just burn.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, here, let's just burn this plastic.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's like outside.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't we uh we don't have a wood stove.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but like outside in like fires.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: My husband's like, What what are you doing?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, we're just gonna we're gonna burn all this because it's fire night, and he's like, That's disgusting.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't just burn whatever you want, like we're not burning trash.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: I advise against burning the plastic.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's the toxic gases and stuff, and not not a good yeah.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not like actual like bottles of plastic stuff, like not like trash like that, but like you know, like the plastic that comes on the wood and stuff.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: If it's still on there, I'm just like, or if there's like weird um, I guess like plastic on envelopes, because I will burn paper so that I'm just like, okay, I'm gonna throw all this mail and these bills and just gonna have a good old bonfire.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, we're gonna have toxic fume fire.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Which actually is a fun tie-in because the reason I've been dying to get you on here just because I love your content and I love I love your podcast.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I was at first like, oh man, there's gotta be like some weirdo tie-in.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I introduce my audience?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then you covered a case in no all of my Pennsylvania listeners out there, Centralia.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that you probably have heard of it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I was so excited and I've listened to it, I told you like twice all over, because it is a fire that continues to burn.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the fire is officially old enough to collect social security now.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: It is 62, it will be 63 this May 2025.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, a lot of people initially asked me, like, why are you covering Centralia on a true crime podcast?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, you'll have to listen to find out.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's several different theories of how the fire may have started.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the most prevalent theory, and the one that I think that there's holds the most weight, the one that has the most evidence to support, is the idea that the city council approved lighting a fire in a trash dump.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the intention was to run all the rats out of the dump and to handle the smells before their Memorial Day parade.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that the trash dump was in an old strip mine.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there was openings from the old strip mine into the underground mine tunnels.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, those openings were supposed to have been sealed up prior to operating the landfill, but whether they weren't sealed up because of negligence or just human error or whatever, there was still openings.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so the assumption is that um there's a really great author named David Decock, and he uncovered receipts showing that they paid firefighters for standby that day.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why I think that's what what started the fire.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it was actually illegal in Pennsylvania at the time to s to have dump fires like that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you believe that that's how the fire started, it was an intentional dump fire intended to take care of smells and rodents, then you believe it's a criminal fire because they weren't supposed to light a fire at that time.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just, I mean, I actually first heard about Centralia when I was in I went to a community college and I was in an environmental like science major.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the trips was gonna be to go to Centralia, because it's not far from like Baltimore, you know.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, you got to take field trips in college?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was community college and it was environment and it was environmental science, and it was my favorite teacher ever.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Dr.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Shockner.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a great name.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was fantastic, and he was like just total like ex-hippie.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: He just like, you know, he just had the best like teaching style, and I loved him.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, we he to that's how I learned about it was like we were supposed I never actually went there, so I didn't I missed the field trip for whatever, I don't know, who knows, whatever reason when I was like 19.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I that was it was just such a mystery.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was and I think at that time when we were learning about it, it was definitely more like the environmental impact and just like okay, well, isn't this crazy?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like this this fire was started in the 60s and now it's just it's still it's an underground fire and people live still going.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's still going and people live there.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there are currently um I talked to somebody that lives right outside Central.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: She actually's on TikTok and she actually um lives in an abandoned, well, not an abandoned church, like not like she's a squatter, but she and her husband bought an abandoned church and turned it into their home.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And she told me that because the last census records from 2020 show that there was five residents.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked her how many how homes are still there, because anytime any of the residents pass away, their home gets demolished because of the agreement that was made for them to stay.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they can't leave, they got a a payout for their land and they can't leave their property to any future generation.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there's still five homes there, so we assume there's still five residents.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that was based on the last census in 2020.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So then they can't like go back and like sit cause like any like they can't have any like probable cause for like suing or anything if anything happens to them like medically, because they're there is it like a they're refusing to leave kind of or so what happened is is that it I mean it was a really big controversy because so the the dump was actually outside of the city limits.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that the laws were written, and Centralia took advantage of this, allowed the city to own the mining rights or the town to own the mining rights directly below the town, and that was intended to keep people from strip mining, you know, the land out from under people's houses.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but these houses were already built on top of active mines, but now that the town owned the rights.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when the fire started, the town didn't actually have any jurisdiction where the fire actually started because it was on land that was um outside of the town limits, and they didn't have the finances to fight a minefire.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Minefires are a big deal.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So they sort of tossed it to the state and ex expected the state to fix it.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't get involved in what the state was doing for a really long time.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we go through like, I don't want to go, you know, go through the whole sh bang.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I want people to like go to the episode because it's amazing.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what ended up happening was they had multiple failed attempts to control the fire.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And as the fire, as they realized that the fire was impacting the residents of the town and was dangerous now, um, they had choices to make.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: They um needed to decide whether they were going to spend money to try to save as much of the town as possible, which meant like half the residents of the town were gonna lose their homes instead of all of them, or if they were going to accept a buyout.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the people that were in harm's way right now, whose families could potentially die in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning, they wanted the fastest answer.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they knew if they waited to try to get approval for a trenching project that would leave half the town remaining, it could be another year before they got approval and funding and everything.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It could be another year before they got bought out of their homes, and they needed out now.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a lot of pressure in the town for people to accept the buyout.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I apologize if you can hear my dog.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of pressure for people to accept the buyout because there was people's lives that were in immediate danger.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the one thing that the government did right was when they did the buyout, they prevented the homes from being depreciated because of the minefire.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because originally, based on the way the law was written, the town real estate should have been devalued 30% because of the minefire.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't, which was great for the people that lived there, but because of that, and there is a lot of disagreements.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: This this sort of started like almost like a little in-town civil war between people that that wanted to leave and people that wanted the town to be saved.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to like back up and kind of just tell like the beginning of the story?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know there's like one part that I was really excited about, but if you want to just like give us highlights, because I w it's so it it's a three, three or four parts.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's five parts.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, okay.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think you yeah, yeah.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So April went super deep into this, because there's just so many, as you can tell, so many layers.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want to just kind of give us like how it started, and I know that little boy, that was like a big story too.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so the we know that the fire started most likely from a fire in the dump that was intentionally set.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then when they realized that they that they had a fire in the mines underground, they threw it to sort of to the state, and then the state undertook several projects to try to control it.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the people in the town really turned a blind eye to it, and they were like, this the state's we don't we don't know what's going on.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until there was a little boy named Todd Dumbowski, and he was in his grandmother's backyard, and something called um a subsidence, which is basically like a sinkhole caused by a minefire or caused by mining where anywhere there's like a a void under the ground, opened up all the way up to the surface, and Todd fell into it over top of an active fire.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, like he said he could look down and see the fire below him, and he is scrambling, you know, is the the basically the earth below him is turning into like almost like liquid, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like and he's trying to scramble to grab anything, and his hand happened to find a tree root.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he was able to hold on to that tree root until his cousin could yank him out.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: He was only in the hole for about 40 seconds, but he reportedly had like lifelong trauma, like he couldn't stand to have blankets over top of him when he was sleeping and things like that because of this incident that happened.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that was what first made it unavoidable for the people of Centralia to recognize that the issues that they were having weren't the result of mine fire gases that were just traveling underground under their town, that the fire was actually going under their town.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know the history of the mines?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the a little bit.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um so this area of Pennsylvania is anthrocyte coal, which is different than the bituminous coal that we see mined throughout other parts of Appalachia.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that the anthrocyte coal is, you know, a lot of the bituminous regions, the mines are very flat.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: But in the anthrocyte region, the anthrocyte veins, if you imagine like inverted bowls that are stacked in each other.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes like a parabolic curve going down deep into the earth.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that made it really difficult because a lot of the methods that they had to fight minefires at the time don't work in steep slopes.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we're talking slopes in excess of 30 degrees.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of just having like a flat area that they've mined out in order to reach all the levels that these slopes are going to, they had like tunnels that were stacked on top of each other, and they would have um shafts that would interconnect them here and there.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it just made it made this a much more challenging fire than the fires that we see in the bituminous regions.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And even in the bituminous regions, there's records of fires that were 80 years being fought and stuff.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, anytime you have a mine fire, whether it's anthracite coal or bituminous coal, you have a problem.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it there was just so many additional challenges.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not the least of which was the fact that Centralia was a very small, not politically powerful jurisdiction.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if they'd had more political clout, they may have gotten more support from both the state and the federal government.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just like a small mining town.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I can I'm when you were telling that just to like I just get a picture of this little boy like literally like falling into a hell pit.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is crazy.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I was thinking about like after he gets pulled out, like his grandmother calls his mom and is like, you need to bring some clothes over for him and stuff.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just thinking, like, this is so like pre-Gen X.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like right, because like even in a Gen X, like if we fell into a pit in the ground, our parents would have had more to say than bring over some clean clothes.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, this was back in the this was in 1980, so it it was just a very yeah, I was born in 82, so yeah.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I could just imagine like yeah, like my grandmother being like, Yeah, just bring her some bring her some clothes.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: She fell, she fell in the pit.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Gen X kids grew up different.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Different.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like Parks, did you are you a Parks and Rec fan?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, remember the pit?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like the trash, the trash dome that he lived in.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like he just everyone's fallen in the pit.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's actually two movies that were inspired by Centralia.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fun little beat of trivia.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um the first one is a comedy, and the second one's a horror.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the comedy is nothing but trouble.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: The movie with um Chevy Chase and Demi.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I love that movie.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: My husband makes me watch it.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's the creepiest movie.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny though.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: My husband loves it.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a trash family.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it was loosely based on Centralia.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then the horror movie was Silent Hill, which came out in 2006.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is there, I feel like there's there was a Marilyn tie-in.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it I can't I might be misremembering.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have to confess that I've never seen Silent Hill.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't Well, it was a video game too.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember like playing the video game.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was like super creepy.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I saw the movie.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that, yeah, when I look because then I was listening to your episode and I was like, oh yeah, I should probably rewatch that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because now I don't remember.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: But oh my gosh.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that Chevy Chase movie.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great movie.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: If anyone hasn't seen it and you just need like a silly like depart from reality for a night movie, that's a good movie for that.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Have a couple drinks because it's like 80s.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a we it's weird.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a weird.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's oh my gosh.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm I'm sorry, now parks and wrecks in my head.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's my favorite show ever.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm totally Leslie Nope.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to save the pit.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like Okay, so unfortunately, a little child falls into the pit of hell and then is saved by a route.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then so what happens?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like so finally, like it lights a fire under the at least the county.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what had been happening leading up to Todd Dombowski falling into the pit was that um more and more residents were having suspicious things happening in their houses.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Their plants were turning brown and dying, like seemingly overnight.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one couple, their pilot light for their furnace went out and they tried to relight it and they couldn't keep a match lit in their basement.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so they went upstairs and actually lit some newspaper, and as they were bringing the newspaper down to try to light it, the newspaper went out halfway down the stairs.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that started to make people think something's going on.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Something's wrong.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that what was wrong was they had such low concentrations of oxygen in their basements at this point that they couldn't it couldn't support a flame.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then one family um a lot of families started ha complaining of intermittent headaches and intermittent nausea, and it was all intermittent.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So people were sleeping even in the winter with all their windows open.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then one family came downstairs one morning and they had a pet canary, and you know the old story of the canary in the coal mine.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: The miners used to take canaries down into the coal mines, and if the canary became lethargic or unconscious, they knew that the air quality in the mine was dangerous for people because canaries are more sensitive to carbon monoxide and all of the toxic mine gases.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So this family had a pet canary, and when they came downstairs, their pet canary that morning, they all woke up feeling ill, and their pet canary was dead downstairs.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that was what that started right before Todd falls into the earth.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that was what really woke up everybody to the fact that they have been ignoring a problem for too long, and now it's affecting their town and it's affecting their residents, and something has to be done.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: That is wild to me because I mean, you just think about like I don't know, general sensitivities.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm super sensitive to like mold, you know.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, we actually lived in a house that had Like mold damage because our basement flooded.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so like I just can't imagine living in that sort of constant feeling of like sickness and like not either not knowing like because there's nothing as far as your eye can see that's wrong, you know what I mean?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then just like, yeah, you wake up and Petey's dead in the birdcage.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, actually, their bird's name was Birdie.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I remember that.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Birdie.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Birdie.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, so but you know, and I I said in our episode, and it's true, like, that bird may have saved a lot of lives because it wasn't until that happened that people started being like, oh, we need, you know, we need to be having our houses monitored for these toxic gases.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what's hilarious to me is the government agreed.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: The government was like, all right, we're gonna bring in carbon monoxide detectors.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the carbon monoxide detectors at that time were these massive machines that were like a piece of furniture that sat in the corner of your living room.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they um they only had so many of them because they were like about$2,000 each.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you put your name on a waiting list if you wanted your house monitor for carbon monoxide and you got it for 30 days, and then you had to send it to your neighbor's house.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like, that's just that's crazy to me.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then you think, I mean, small mining town.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, are are we talking like just really tiny, you know, like small, super small houses, or is it like a more developed sort of town?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's, I mean, so people living there, not many, obviously, but I mean, can you kind of paint a picture of like what the town Yeah?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: So there was, you know, there was a couple grocery stores, there was um definitely like sort of like a main road.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was two churches, two big churches, and they had a private, they had their own private school.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um the Catholic school is a predominantly Catholic area.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then um most of the houses were row homes.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So like think of like when you go to like older parts of Baltimore, since I know you're in Maryland, yeah.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: You have those areas of row homes.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: So think of homes like that um, you know, throughout town.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just, you know, I would say if you think back to like 1960s, small town America with like Main Street and and uh, you know, because of their parade, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to clean up the town for the parade.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the town existed because of coal, and coal was the ultimate demise of the town.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's what built the town was the discovery of Anthersite in the region.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And as mines open there, they need people to work there, and people came there, and then it ended up, you know, the town got built up, and that's how so many towns in the United States started was there was some sort of resource there people needed.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Most people came to work that resource, you get a town.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still burning.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still burning.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't get over.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know why.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason in my brain, I just like I just can't get over the fact that this it's still burning and people are still like just living there.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, and one of the first businesses actually that had to close down was the gas station.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: There is a gas station that was owned by a former mayor of the town.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he um called one of the mining inspectors because he was like, you know, the wall of my basement is really hot.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And like they measured like the wall of his basement, I think, was like measuring like um, I think near his house the boreholes were measuring like elevated temperatures, and then they climbed like nearly a hundred degrees over a couple days.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so they started monitoring the temperature of the fuel in the underground gas tanks at the gas station.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when the temperature of the fuel started increasing, they were like, nope, we gotta get that out of here.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's gonna blow up.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody, there was a town full of praying grandmothers or something.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this is crazy to me.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like all the like you're right, the bird definitely saved a lot of people's lives.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then if the gas tanks would have blown up, oh my goodness.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out that the reason that that particular home and the home next to it had such problems with increasing temperature was because of bootleg mining that had occurred during the depression.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the mines in the area had closed, and a lot of the miners, you know, were desperate to feed their families and they didn't own mining rights.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so one guy, the neighbor of the guy that owned the gas station, um, the people that had owned their house before they did, had dug a bootleg mining access tunnel under their house that they didn't know about because it was filled in.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to and they had these bootleggers had actually mined out most of the area under the street.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that wasn't mapped anywhere because it wasn't an official mine.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knew that, you know, this street basically under the street now is just a tunnel straight into people's basements throughout town.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: The street could have caved in.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It could have that's well, yeah.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me, so I don't well, because Baltimore is like old and has crappy infrastructure and amazing government um that does nothing about it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: But like we've had like several sinkholes like throughout the past, you know, couple years, like just like, oh yeah, part of Fell's Point just fell into the, you know, whatever.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like here's what this this collapsed again.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what on I can't even imagine.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then it just like cleaned, like, does it get cleaned up and then you still live there?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's a hassle enough, but like, yeah.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's funny is that in the town I live in, there's a house.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: The town I live in is historic.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there's it's a mining town, and there is a um, it's a mining town for precious metals.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh there's a a home that is now a hotel in our town square.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's historic.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when the current, um, I don't know if it was the current owners or the owners before that when they bought it, they did were renovating the basement and they found a mining shaft in their basement.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: The people that had owned it had, and so now they have like a glass top on it so you can see how deep that they tunneled underneath the yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ugh.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm claustrophobic, so I just I don't even want to like think about going into a mine.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I don't know how spelunkers and stuff.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we um we went to Mexico.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: One of our like vacations to Mexico was super fun, and we did like all the excursions, and that was one of the excursions.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like really afraid of heights, and I'm just like I'm not super adventury when it comes to that sort of stuff.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'll I'll go on a hike, but I'm not gonna like you know go zip.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up ziplining through a jungle, which was terrifying.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like the picture that they're like, oh look, everyone's everyone's doing this and stuff, and I'm like literally like I'm gonna die.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like the picture is total fear, but I didn't know that that was like it's like let's we're just gonna go into the cenote.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Here, just hold on to the rope and you can like kind of I just pictured myself like just bouncing off of a wall.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, like it was like spelunking down into a hole in the earth, and I was like, you know what?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is I hate this.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hate every moment of this.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the water in C Notes is so cold, like you that I wasn't prepared for that.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because we went to one that was relatively open, like you I what didn't feel like I was back in a cave, like I could see how to get out the whole time, so I was okay with that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: When I got in, I was like, I was not prepared for how cold this water is.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that it's like this beautiful portion of the earth, but also I'm terrified and I want to want to leave.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm with you there.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, I just can't imagine.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't imagine like thinking it's a good idea to dig.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now that had to have been like a rough tunnel, like that's a rough tunnel.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you know, you're actually building it out and it's being a prepared sort of mine that those guys made in the basement, right?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they dug a they dug their own man-made tunnel into the adjacent mine tunnels that had been dug by the mining companies.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then the mining companies would leave towers of anthersite periodically based on structural evaluations for where they needed to be and how big they needed to be to continue to support the ground above.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so these bootleg miners would tunnel into these mines and they would take out those support pillars.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Then that's what they had done from this basement is they had tunneled into the mine shaft adjacent to the street and taken out the support pillars, bootlegging it.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: New Appalachian.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to ask yourself, like, what would you what in the depression, like how desperate would these people have to be in order to do something that was that because they were risking their own lives by taking out these structural supports, the mine could have collapsed while they were down there.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you I would probably imagine that they're they're so used to that kind of I mean, life-threatening work anyway.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you'd have to know at least what you were doing, you know.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: We hope.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: We hope, and then just to to get down there and do anything.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you're right, like the desperation.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's crazy.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, like the desperation of the parents that were putting their kids to bed at night and leaving their windows open and the dead of winter so that they didn't suffocate in their sleep.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine how scary.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: What did it start?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: The minefire started in 1962.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really like the late 70s, early 80s when they started to realize that it had actually gone past um the barrier that the government had put in place to protect the town.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and there was a lot of problems with the barrier.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: They used a fly ash barrier, which I'm sure from your environmental study, you know that that has its own problems.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Fly ash is not free of environmental concerns.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the fly ash um wasn't a good solution for the the steep grades, and it also settled.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: So they were there was openings at the top.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so as the boreholes closer to town started heating up, the government's like, oh no, it's just, you know, there's some openings at the top, and it's just the gases are going over.
• 32:08
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody's addressing the fact that this was supposed to be a solid barrier through which the fire can't penetrate.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: If the gases can get through the fire can too.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's crazy.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, those poor people.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: They yeah, they dealt with a lot.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, as the government was doing more and more gas monitoring in the houses and from the boreholes throughout town, they found not just that it was carbon monoxide, but they started getting increases in carbon dioxide and increases in methane.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Methane is explosive in the right concentrations.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they were getting alarms so frequently in the school that the school just unplugged the alarm and were like, oh my gosh.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: They were like, we were having to like do like five and six evacuations a day, and we can't we can't function like that.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we're just leaving the windows open and the kids will be fine.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I love that mentality.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: So like, ugh.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I mean, I don't know.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a wild we think about it now, but like as parents, it's like I would be like, What are you doing, school?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think about the stuff that like we complain about now, and it's like they're just like, Yeah, just open a window.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the parents really did start getting upset because their kids were coming started coming home from school and complaining of feeling more sick at school and more frequently.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so then the parents found out that the alarms were being ignored or unplugged, and you know, yeah, it was a whole thing.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right, because they're just like, Yeah, we just took care of that.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just gonna unplug it and open a window.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: You guys will be fine.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me very grateful that we can get small, compact, reasonably priced carbon monoxide detectors now.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think you can almost see the edge of mine.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can totally see yours.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: So and so when it goes off and it beeps and it needs attention, don't don't ignore it.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: I never would.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: It never would.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like people come over to my house sometimes and they're like, why do you have smoke detectors in every room on this on the upstairs?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, my house is a one story with a walkout basement.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the ground level is our bedroom level, and I'm like, you're supposed to have a smoke detector in every bedroom.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Every level, too.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're supposed to sleep with the doors closed.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: You are?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't why are you s why?
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because in fires that happen at night, so typically it takes about 40 seconds after flaming ignition.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you a lot most house fires you'll see they start from smoldering.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so typically once we get to flaming ignition, we're looking at about 40 seconds before we get your first smoke detector to go off.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if your smoke detectors aren't all wired together, that could be on a different floor of your house or really far away from the sleeping rooms.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: So by the time you wake up, you could have already been breathing carbon monoxide and all of these toxic fire gases, and you wake up confused and hypoxic.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you reduce the chances of that happening by sleeping with your door closed.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that you can wake up with a clear enough head to decide, you know, can I go out this door?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need to go out a window or whatever?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have animals and they do not tolerate closed doors.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't have no judgment to anyone that sleeps with doors open.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: We do at our house also, but I also have smoke detectors like every five feet.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I would imagine so, yeah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like you because you know, I mean, you probably have seen some wild Is there like so outside of because I want people to go and listen to the entire case of Centralia.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's weird enough, this town is still smoldering underneath.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but is there anything like outside of that, like a case that just really kind of caught your eye and that's like, whoa, this was weird, or like, you know, weirdly preventable or something like that that you that sticks out of your brain?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, when I first started this podcast, I knew that I was supposed to start it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you ever just have a gut feeling about something, but I didn't exactly understand what my why was.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is it?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: What am I doing here?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: What am I, what's my mission?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: What am I advocating for?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as I started doing the podcast, I started covering a lot of wrongful conviction cases.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that I realized I'm like, there's my why.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about arson convictions specifically, you know, arson investigation was like the wild, wild west until the early 2000s, really.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And fire investigators were taught to look for these very specific fire signatures.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and I talk about these in a lot of the wrongful conviction cases that we cover on the podcast.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they were told whenever you see these fire signatures, it's definitely arson.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: There is an accelerant, and it's definitely arson.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they've all been debunked by laboratory testing.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the first wrongful conviction case I covered with my old co-host back in 2022, Jenny.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she covered it, and it's the Cameron Todd Willingham case, and it is a heartbreaker of a case.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a steep learning curve to podcasting.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I probably will revisit the case again later to talk more about the scientific and technical aspects of it than we did the first time we covered it.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he was actually executed.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that was crime.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we restart, when we relaunched this past June with my husband as the co-host, we um covered the Christine Bunch case.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually had the opportunity to interview Christine Bunch, and that interview is also on our podcast.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: That was awesome.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And seeing what happened to her really lit a fire under my butt to make sure that people hear these stories because I guarantee you there's people sitting in prison right now that were convicted of arson based on these now debunked arson investigation myths.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the more we talk about the problems with the way that arson investigations were done, the better chance these people have of getting innocence projects and law clinics and stuff to take a look at their case, the better chance they have of getting potentially new evidentiary hearings or post-conviction relief.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I I don't want to exhaust people by only covering wrongful conviction cases because they're really emotional and hard to listen to uh sometimes.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: But that one was definitely I the Christine Bunch case, I told you I was listening I was cooking um in my kitchen and I was listening to that, and I was just like I had to like stop several times and just like cry because it was just like oh my gosh, this poor woman.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um what she went through.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: I just I can't even imagine.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I got emotional when we interviewed her.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's um I I interviewed her um on Riverside, so I yeah, I could see her and like there's there's like clips from the video where I'm like, I know, like trying to like you got through.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like you definitely do such a fantastic job.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have a really like professional, you know, you have so much information that you're conveying in these in these cases, and I know that there's so much work that you do on the back end, so I just really appreciate it.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: True crime's tough because I don't know, that's we never do anything true crime because I'm just kind of like, all right, well, either it's been solved or it's like unsolved.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people, like my husband can't stand like unsolved anything, and I I love that, like, because there's still like that possibility of it being like, you know, broken, you know what I mean?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like break the case or whatever.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, there's so much work and effort that you put in to these cases and to give voice to that one, especially, guys.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I really recommend um obviously like following April on Crime to Burn, but just that Christine Bunch was oh my gosh, I felt so bad for her.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think what I realized that I have um what I bring to the true crime community is that I am a fire expert.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we hear a lot of different um, you know, true crime podcasters out there.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of them have access to forensics experts, some of them have access to um, you know, there goes my dog again.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them have access to like people that work in um medical examiner's office and stuff like that.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't hear any other fire experts out there talking about the physics of fire and able to explain to people what the evidence that the investigators found actually means.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when when so when we relaunched in June, I had spent our hiatus um trying to figure out what I really wanted, the direction I wanted the podcast to go, and what I really wanted to bring to the table.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized I didn't want to just bring you news that you can get from a Google search.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to get the court records, I wanted to do the deep dives, I wanted to get the actual evidence that the investigators had, and I wanted to explain to people the physics of fire and how it relates to what the investigators found so that they get that perspective, that that was what I could bring to the table that was different.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I really try to do.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's so awesome.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just the work that you put in.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: I sent you a case.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you ever like I know you're like super busy, but remember I sent you that Hex Hollow case?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's in my list.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think you should okay.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: One thing about the podcast growing is that a lot of people have started sending in cases.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was gonna ask you.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are people like sending you stuff?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I have a case for you.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got I got three cases just this week that people sent me.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so and it's awesome.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like, whole, I'm gonna have to start doing more episodes because I'm not gonna be able to cover all these in any kind of timely manner.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: So y'all go listen because I need to grow so that I quit my day job and podcast full time.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, that's like everyone's dream except for mine.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like these poor, my poor audience.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't like eight February was just like, forget it.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was the craziest month ever, and I did nothing.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just thanks a lot for being here, guys.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I'm just like, whatever.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who how many people follow, like how many people are listening, but they're still here.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like well, I listened in February.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: But like it's hard.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of and I sometimes I'm like, I hear other podcasts like they're so much bigger, like, and just like, oh man, so hard.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's so hard.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it is, it's a lot of work.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And especially like you're pulling records that number one are costly.
• 42:30
  unknown: Oh yeah.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then also like number two, having to go through and actually know what you're looking at, you know, like that's it's one thing like to look at old newspaper articles.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: We always kind of talk about that, where you kind of have to sift through the either language or like sometimes they just kind of you can tell they were just like making up news, you know.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: But people I was so shocked when I started getting court records how much of the press information is wrong or misleading.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was really shocking to me.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the case that I really pulled the court records for first was the David Michael Crawford serial arson case, which is a case in Maryland.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: He was the former Laurel Maryland police chief that is accused of 12 fires across six counties.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: And his oral arguments for his appeal were heard February 10th.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've been checking the Maryland appellate court page like daily looking for the decision of whether or not he's gonna get a new trial.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: But um I went to go get the court records in that case, and I was blown away by how much it was gonna cost me.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the court reporter was like, well, you know, you can get um, or the court clerk was like, you can get um recordings instead of transcripts, and it's cheaper.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Great.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it was still even recordings was, you know, like a third of a mortgage payment.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: But well, and and then it's still like d it's a different way of processing the information because you have to like listen, go back, listen, go back.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: I have transcripts now because I typed everything.
• 44:00
  unknown: Oh my gosh.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: I learned I found some software that would slow the audio down for me so that I could type fast enough.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm luckily I'm a really fast typer, so I have to slow it down too much.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I I typed it was a about a two-week trial, and I typed every word.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that I could refer back to it.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was a 10 part series.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: That was one of the the challenges in podcasting, especially true crime podcasting, is metering the story.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're doing a big series like this, you don't want to just here's what happened, here's the evidence, here's what they did in court, because it's it gets too monotonous.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so you sort of need to like separate it and break it up in order to meter out the exciting parts of the story so that each episode has the same impact.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to have trans, I had to be able to reference back where what happened in the court case so that I could take it apart in a way that made sense for this the way that the narrative style I used in that storytelling.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Muck got you like interested in fire, like just the like aspects.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Were you a pyro?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Were you one of those kids?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, I was trying to skip school.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up in St.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: Mary's County, Maryland.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Which is down between the river and the bay.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's a Navy base down there.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was a civil servant.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um I was in high school and I was bored out of my mind.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I would notice that there's these guys that had these big pagers and they would just jump up and leave class in the middle of the day.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, why do they get to leave?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: I want to go.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Well, they're volunteer firefighters, you know.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's the whole county is like almost the whole county's home response.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so if they get a call during school, they have to go fight the fire.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wait, we're we're teenagers.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Yeah, you can be a firefighter down here when you're 16.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, That's awesome.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and joined the fire department to try to cut class.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: The problem that I didn't know until after I joined the fire department was that um you could only leave school if you were a member of the fire department that was in the same town as our school, and I was two districts over because Oh, gotcha.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, St.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Mary's County is pretty rural, or it was at the time.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's growing fast.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, so I couldn't leave school, but I did sort of catch the bug.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to the University of Maryland.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: So when I got to school, got to college, I was like, well, I'm not gonna keep doing that.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm gonna focus on school.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be an engineer, an aerospace engineer like my dad.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I was at school for orientation.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: I did the last possible orientation.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was like two days before I had to move in because I kept putting off schedules.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like putting it off, yeah.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because ADHD.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, and they were there's a lot of people there that were general engineering, they were or the undecided engineering.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were reading out all the different um disciplines that you can major in to give people the syllabus, and they said fire protection engineering, and I was like, What's what's that?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it happened to be that one of the people that was running my orientation came over to talk to me and was like, Wait, you said you're you're a firefighter in your hometown, and I'm like, Yeah, and they're like, Well, did you know if you major in fire protection engineering and you're a volunteer firefighter in the state of Maryland, the state will reimburse part of your tuition?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, Well, can I double major if I do that?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, Yeah.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and talked to the head of the department and changed my major, and it was the best decision I ever made in my life.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, truly.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Look at how it like brought you to like where you are now.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like exposing all of this truth.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been something that has been, you know, I always tell people like the best decisions of my life, the most impactful decisions of my life have been something I stumbled into.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was trying to cut class because I was bored.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: I loved it, you know, and then it it ended up growing into a career that I feel really passionate about.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I actually got to combine my love of aerospace with fire protection engineering when I was in college.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was an intern for NASA.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: I did system safety for shuttle launched payloads at 19.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to I'm trying to think about that.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like what's that?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was part of a program called Hitchhiker, and that was where anyone in the country could apply to send an experiment up on a shuttle.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, to give you one example, one of the experiments that was applied was a group of kindergartners, I think it was, wanted to send earthworms into space to see if they tunneled differently in zero gravity.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: So our my job was to take their experiment plan and basically to put make it easy to understand, to disaster plan it.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: What is all the possible things that could go wrong?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like the container breaks or an earthworm gets stuck in a circuit board.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like what are all the possible things that can go wrong and would they cause a catastrophic failure?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: And can we engineer out those potential going wrong?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the first step, one of the first steps that they had to make before they decided which experiments would be allowed to go up to space.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's so cool.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, people ask me all the time, like, you know, I joke with people, like, oh, of course I have anxiety.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: My entire job is to try to think of the absolute worst thing that can happen.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like and then try to engineer it out.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's so cool.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: So did did the earth what happened with the earthworm?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did they make it?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: The earthworms, I believe, made it, yeah.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Are they there?
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are they in space?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I I'm pretty sure they're back now.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but yeah.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then um, you know, I worked there, I was so I was working for a contractor for NASA.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then it just so happened that the contract got sold to or got won by a different contracting firm while I was there, and they screwed up the paperwork and accidentally gave me full benefits.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in college, and they couldn't take them away because I'd signed as soon as I got this letter, I was excited.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, they think so much of me.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're giving me like 401k and health insurance and dental and vision.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I I mean I signed that and they couldn't take it back.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the last couple years I was in college, I was working for NASA, getting full benefits.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: My parents.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it just it was and and I was really disappointed when I found out it was a mistake, and I was like, oh, and I was fully prepared for them to be like, we can't give you all this, and I was gonna be like, okay, but they were like, but you sign the papers and it's a contract, it's a contract.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, take that NASA.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it was NASA's contract, or it wasn't NASA directly.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: But that is so awesome.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, working for NASA.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, I have to ask you, like, what do you think about all the UFOs and the alien stuff?
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: Any you know, any opinion there?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I have always believed that there's there's very little chance that we're alone in the universe, right?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do think that there's a good chance that there have been other life forms from more advanced planets or civilizations that have meandered near Earth.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do I think all of the potential sightings or all of the potential activities that people are contributing to these things?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I also don't have any like logical way of saying, well, this is more likely than that.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm just, you know, I'm not really an expert on on those things.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I just yeah.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: I assume that's totally fair.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no right or wrong answer.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: I assume that when we have solid proof and the government's ready to let us in on the secret, then we'll then then we'll know.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: We'll all be but we'll and and Centralia will still be on fire.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Centralia will still be on fire.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they'll bring some technology to help put out that fire.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: That would be great.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: That would be awesome.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys are listening out there, if you could just put out the central fire, we'd really appreciate it.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, one of the things that makes that fire so difficult to put out, a lot of people don't realize.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I I kept getting asked, why don't they just flood the mine tunnels?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't they just flood the mine tunnels?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so one of the I thought this was like science nerd interesting.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a science nerd.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um wet so I'm not gonna go through the whole chemical process.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I actually explained it a little more deep in depth on our podcast, but when you add water to an anthracite coal fire that goes through like multiple different um reactions, and the final reaction actually liberates the hydrogen out of the water and creates hydrogen gas, which is explosive.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's just like blow up.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it actually trying to flood the tunnels actually can result in explosions.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is that would be my first.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just be like, get Rob, get the hose.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just I just picture like people in you know, like Baltimore, like Highland Town, like spraying.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like if this happened in Dundalk, we would just be like spraying it with our hoses.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, yeah, take that.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh, I mean, there's just a lot of challenges.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then that hydrogen can travel away from the seat of the fire.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if it comes into contact with heat or you know, something that that causes it to ignite, you can ha you can get fires that are remote from even the main fire because of the gasification of hydrogen that occurs in anthracite fires.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it was all really.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating, yeah.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's eerie.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you look at the pictures, it's just like it's just so eerie.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like go seeing the steam come up out of the ground, um, especially in the winter, and like seeing areas where the snow has melted.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you can clearly see that there's a mine tunnel there.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's like silent hill imagery for sure.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think one of the things that really got me, and I talked about it in the episode, was when they were doing one of the projects to try to stop the fire from reaching the town, they dug out part of a trench, and they were saying that you could from the town, you could just look towards the horizon and just see like the the brimstone, like the the wall of this pit that they were digging was just all flaming coal.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just I'm like, it's baffling to me that I have never seen a coal mine fire in real life.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: But in studying this one, I learned a lot about the challenges and the differences between, you know, fighting a fire in the bituminous region versus fighting a fire in the anthracite region.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I didn't even know what bituminous and anthracite coal were before I started researching centralia.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had no idea.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: You just think of coal, you know.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: Coal, yeah.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: My gosh.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Ugh.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: So And they use conspiracy theories about centralia.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, let's hear 'em.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people accuse the government of not controlling the fire because they said that since the town itself owned the mining rights below a town's land, that they think that they wanted to use eminent domain, which is what they did use to buy out the people that had to leave.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they said they wanted to use eminent domain to get those coal rights to all that anthracite.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um now I disagree because the anthracite coal um started declining during the Second World War and it never really rebounded.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: It had some brief resurgences.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: But even at the time when the fire started, the reduction in value of anthrocyte was so massive that it would have been a really dumb gamble.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's no need for it.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like there was no and in 62 years, we haven't seen anyone go in there and start digging out the town yet.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a safe I think we can put a pin in that one.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: That conspiracy theory.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and plus, you know, that conspiracy theory would have had to make it over not just over multiple years, but over multiple different administrations, both, you know, democratic administrations and republican administrations, and at at three and four different levels of government.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think that a conspiracy of that nature could have survived that.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wouldn't vote it past the government, but I see what you're saying, because it's like that in theory, that file would have to be on multiple desks, and it's like this little tiny like why what are you guys really hiding?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can't imagine it being anything like that deep, you know.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any other ones besides the like the more those governmental or there's nothing like eerie and paranormal going on?
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just a straight up scientific covet.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't heard of anything eerie and paranormal.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: But if anyone has you can email me at crime to burner gmail.com.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, they did there was a little bit of of hubbub around 2020 around um the quarantine because that's when the highway that goes into Cinchelia was deemed to it, it had become like a a almost a tourist destination as well as graffiti highway, because the highway was closed and people would go there and there's areas where the highway was splitting open and you could see the steam coming out and it became just absolutely covered in graffiti.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was called graffiti highway.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: And um they the company that owns the land around there came and brought in like hundreds of dump truckloads full of dirt, and they covered the highway to try to discourage people from visiting because they felt it was getting too dangerous because the highway was I think they think the highway was in danger of collapsing.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: And well, yeah, I mean that yeah, at some point it's all gonna I mean technically the whole area is in danger of collapsing, but right.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens like after I mean, obviously the people that are still living there are just in living in danger and they're doing this at their own risk.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let's like fast forward to when those people leave.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is there a plan?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to get into it if it like I don't want to like give the whole episodes away, but like is it just gonna keep burning or is it just gonna like implode into itself?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like no, in fact, you know, the fire the fire doesn't stay in one place, it keeps moving, and it's likely that the fire is now um beyond the area where the people that were are still living there are living.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean that they're not necessarily being exposed to potentially um toxic gases that are still traveling through the existing mines that could travel back to where they live.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: But experts have estimated, they initially estimated that the fire would burn for somewhere around 500 years.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Newer estimates have been closer to 200 to 250 years.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we're not even halfway there for the fire to burn out.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: And unless somebody comes unless anthrocyte coal has some huge resurgence and somebody has sees value in going in there and digging out the spot out, yeah, then it probably won't ever be put out.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or unless some amazing new technology arises that makes it much easier to extinguish.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or if like the mountains, like trolls open up and then then just take it.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's where something.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tie in Lord of the Rings to anything.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: So will my husband.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: We just need some of that action.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just a dragon.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just a dragon.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have to make it weird.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: April, I'm so glad you came on.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad that we finally came up with something that we could talk about that would interest your listeners and give me a chance to talk about what we do over here at Crime to Burn.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: You guys have to go follow um Crime to Burn on your so tell everybody where they can follow and find you.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we're on um Instagram, X, Facebook, and begrudgingly Twitter.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not Twitter, sorry, TikTok.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: TikTok.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was like the I I joined TikTok at Thanksgiving last year.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it was literally like right before How's it going over there?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're not on TikTok.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a weird place.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not used to it, like I'm very used to Instagram, and I will freely admit I am in my late 40s now.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have uh learning to do a reel on Instagram was a huge deal for me.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had to, I had to Google and watch YouTube videos on how to make reels, and then I had to start a YouTube channel and I had to watch YouTube videos on how to do that, and like I knew nothing about social media.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: So joining TikTok was really scary for me because it was it's so different.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: The algorithm's so different.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have uh made contact with some amazing people over there, and we're growing slowly.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like uh organic growth is easier on TikTok.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is, but you also get a lot of a lot of trash in your organic growth.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like yeah.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: I did I was on TikTok.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I really had I had to like really prayerfully consider like, okay, where am I putting this thing?
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you spread it, you spread your net like too wide, then you're just like all over the place.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I have I was like again, yeah, and I'm 42, so I'm like, I have a life and a family, and I want this to be like as small as possible so I can manage it without it like exploding.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: I did TikTok for like a month and I was like, I can't, I I can't like this is just too it's I don't know what it is, but I guess for me, it was just way too addicting, and I just found myself on it like way too much, and I was I get annoyed with it, and I think it's um, you know, somebody messaged me and was like, hey, I followed you and then I unfollowed you and followed you again, and I keep hoping you're gonna follow me.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I was trying to curate my feed like I do on Instagram, where I don't always follow everyone that follows me.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like yeah, I don't either, you know.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was trying to treat it more like a billboard, and I think because there's so much more opportunity to make money on Instagram, people expect you to follow.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: So then I was like, fine, you know what?
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you follow me, your account is not offensive, and I don't think that you're just trying to sell your OnlyFans or whatever, yeah.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Then you know I'll follow you back.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: Fine.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the result of that has been that when I go to like my friend's feed, that I get a plethora of stuff that is not as interesting to me as when I had a curated feed.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it actually makes it easier for me to spend like 10 minutes and then just put it down.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're done.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I'm most active on Instagram.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm most comfortable on Instagram, and you know, people can always uh email me directly.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: I do respond to my emails, and uh luckily, you know, we're small enough now that I have the ability to if people direct message me or are email me that I I can still respond to everybody.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: So um for now, that's that's the plan.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's where people can find us.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I I always tell everyone, you know, for any podcast that you love, especially for us little guys, anytime you like our content, watch the whole reel.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, the watch time on the reel is exceptionally important for the algorithm to push you out.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: And sharing.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: Leave comments and share it to your stories or even DM it to your friends, or just add it to your favorites.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: Those are things that the algorithm is looking for.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then the more interesting the algorithm thinks you are, the more people it'll push it out to.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: And really, what we're trying to do is just find our audience.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not trying to like shove my stuff down people's throat that don't want it.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just trying to get it out there in front of new people that haven't heard of us yet.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what you're doing tonight.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yay! Yay! Thank you for the opportunity to do that.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, any time.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, if you ever have any time and you want to dive into the Hex Hollow case, it's really it's just like a weird little, like, again, Pennsylvania.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, my Pennsylvania listeners, you guys know what I'm talking about.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't covered it technically on the podcast, but I've talked to um like a couple different people about it, and we like kind of talk about it.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: Crystal and I went to this place, it basically like these people like set this guy on fire, and his body burned, but the house didn't burn down, and it was really weird.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's like it's totally on brand for us because it's like a weird fire and then like witchcraft.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it like kind of goes together.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like people thought it was a supernatural thing, but I would love to get your feedback on like, well, what would be the reason?
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you need all the details, that's why I kind of sent it to you.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: But um Yeah, so I will look into it.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: And also, you know, maybe one time we maybe one day we can talk about um spontaneous human combustion.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna yes, I was gonna ask you about that, but then I was like, no, I'm in love with Centrelli right now.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I did talk to um John over at Dairyland Frights about spontaneous human combustion.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's a lot of people that think that there's um a divinity or supernatural aspect to it.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what I what I tell everybody when I talk about things like that is like I'm an expert on the physics of fire.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not an extra, I'm not a paranormal researcher, I'm not an expert in divinity, I'm not an expert in all these other things.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I can tell you whether or not science can explain something and what their best explanation is.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: But by doing that, I'm not discounting the possibilities of these other things.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just not an expert in those things.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna talk out of my lane of expertise.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the one caveat I always throw out there is that, you know, I don't want to offend anybody that's like, oh, you're trying to explain it with science, but you know, uh, I'm just telling you what science can can say.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, you have to decide based on what, you know, people that are experts in paranormal research.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the stuff and what you're getting into is stuff that is measurable, that is very, it's very, very, you know, science based, and it is something that can be measured and and looked at, and you can really, you know, you're kind of solving a mystery.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I really like like what you do, because it's not it's very, I guess, definitive is what like the word can be, but when we look at wrongful conviction cases, we see that we still get science wrong.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we still get it wrong.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: But spontaneous human combustion, I actually I it's so funny that you said that because I was like, maybe we could talk about that one time.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: My uncle apparently, like, I don't know, I had a weird uncle that like knew someone that spontane like that happened.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: And ever since then I'm like, how what?
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: You just blow up.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I feel like science has a really good explanation for the people that passed away and spontaneously human combusted.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: But did you know that there's cases of survivors that witnessed cases of people that supposedly burst into flames?
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know these people from Adams, so I don't know that they're telling the truth, but there is a case.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know of at least one case in Florida and one case in Tennessee where people allegedly spontaneously burst into flames in front of witnesses and they were able to be put out and treated for their injuries.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, maybe there's crazy.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's more than one thing at play.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe we do have scientific explanations for some of these, and we don't for other.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: I have no explanation.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: I I cannot come up with a scientific explanation that makes sense for those cases if they're really true.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: But they're witnessed and there's statements about them.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows?
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned, guys.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have now we have to do this because we've talked about it.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about it for at least 10 minutes, and now we have to do it.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, April, thank you so much.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, guys, go follow April at crime to burn.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, I well, I don't even know.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just do like a whole little thing that I do, I add at the end.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have like a closing tagline, so I don't even know why I did that.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't either.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: I you know what's funny is I've been doing Info Inferno on our social media.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: Where I talk about unhinged fire news that I've come up with, and at the end of those, I go, make good choices, y'all.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: So make good choices, y'all.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: Make good choices.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk to you guys later.
• 1:07:55
  unknown: Whatever.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_00: You have been listening to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Christina, and thank you so much for tuning in.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sasquatch and Sourdough is so much more than just a podcast.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are a community of kindred spirits, united by our curiosity and fascination with the extraordinary.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to bring you into the conversation.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you've had a brush with the unexplainable, seen something that you can't quite wrap your head around, this is your space.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: We invite you to join us as we break bread and break down the barriers between the known and the unknown.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to share your story, you can email us at sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com or send us a DM on Instagram.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember, the truth is out there.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.