Word: coaling
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...observation tower, I put a quarter in the telescope and then realized there was nothing much to see except the lady making change in the Mexico Shop West. (The brim of the sombrero blocked all view of the Mexico Shop East.) In the Coffee Casa, I met a young coal miner on his way south to a Florida vacation. We talk about the coal strike, we talk about EI Salvador, he buys me coffee, I buy him beer, we agree the country would be in better shape were he and I in-charge. At the EI Toro bar, there...
...nearly 20 years it has been burning-and fuming On the surface, at least, Centralia looks much like dozens of neighboring towns in the hard-coal country of eastern Pennsylvania. A casual traveler topping the hill where Route 61 swings up from the south can take in the entire community at a glance, from St. Ignatius' Catholic church at one end of town, past the wooden row houses and empty storefronts in the center, to onion-domed St. Mary's Russian Orthodox church at the other. But a more careful look reveals something else: acrid-smelling steam coming...
Centralia's ordeal began in 1962, when fire from a refuse pit southeast of town spread into one of the coal seams and then into the mines, eventually forcing them to close. At first, no one seemed terribly concerned. A 1965 attempt to locate and excavate the blaze-the only way to extinguish an anthracite fire-was abandoned when local funds ran out. A number of subsequent attempts were also unsuccessful. Many townspeople assumed that if they ignored the fire it would eventually burn itself...
...Centralia likely to come from anywhere else. Two men appeared in April, introducing themselves as representatives of an unidentified company interested in purchasing Centralia. They offered to buy out homeowners and establish a new town a few miles away in return for the right to mine the coal under Centralia. Most residents did not take the proposal too seriously. Says Tom Larkin, president of the Concerned Citizens Action Group: "We're not that desperate...
Burdened by sporadic worker walkouts and bumbling bureaucratic mismanagement, Poland's economy is in a shambles. Industrial production is down 10% from a year ago, and coal exports to the West, one of the country's most important sources of trade revenue, are off 29%. As a result, Poland last March failed to make scheduled payments on the staggering $27 billion debt that it owes Western governments and banks and technically went into default. Moreover, the Poles urgently need as much as $4 billion in new loans merely to keep up with interest on their current debt...