Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering CEE200 Seminar: CENTRALIA, PA AND ITS MINE FIRE

Speaker: David DeKok
Affiliation: Reporter and Author

UCLA Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
C & EE 200 Seminar
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2019
CS 24 YOUNG HALL 12:00 to 1:00 PM
CENTRALIA AND ITS MINE FIRE
David DeKok
Reporter and Author
Much of the small town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, has disappeared because of a fire in abandoned coal mines that ignited in 1962 and still burns today. Author and journalist David DeKok, who has reported on Centralia for more than 40 years, will talk about how the fire started, why it was never put out, and how the people of the town fought back and eventually won relocation in the early 1980s, with special emphasis on the engineering challenges posed by the fire. He will illustrate his talk with his dramatic photographs taken during the height of the mine fire crisis.
David DeKok writes non-fiction books about crises in small American towns and the people who live in them. He has written two books about the Centralia (Pa.) mine fire, Unseen Danger and Fire Underground, and one about a deadly typhoid epidemic in 1903 that devastated Ithaca, New York, and Cornell University. His most recent book, Murder in the Stacks, is about the murder in the Penn State library in 1969 of a young woman from his hometown, Betsy Aardsma. He lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and is a correspondent for Reuters. Copies of Fire Underground will be available at the seminar for purchase and signing.

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Oct 15, 2019
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Location:
Young Hall CS24
CS24 Young Hall Los Angeles CA 90095