CENTRALIA -- Students from Schuylkill County had an interesting assignment Thursday: to check out a virtual ghost town in Columbia County. It's all part of a science experiment and it's paid for by the U.S. space program.
Students at North Schuylkill High school grew up hearing all sorts of stories about Centralia and the famous mine fire. Many had been to the site before but on this day, it wasn't for sightseeing. It was their chance to do the research.
Walking through the practically abandoned borough of Centralia is usually part of some sort of tourist attraction.
For Patrick Gownley's family, it used to be home. His dad was born there but now it's Gownley's school assignment.
"My dad said that he loved it here and now coming here, I couldn't imagine what he feels like seeing that there's nothing here. The population is like six people, it's ridiculous," Gownley said.
Students from North Schuylkill Junior Senior High School are using the site of the Centralia mine fire for a class project. Instead of hearing about the fire from a text book or family members, they're checking it out for themselves just miles away from the school's campus.
"Now, they're actually getting to dig a little deeper and see what we have here," said Michael Geiswhite.
"We get to actually have our hands on things and be doing it and be outside and not be in school," added Kelsey Burns.
It's part of a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) grant for a remote sensing project.
The kids are looking for hot spots and steam left behind from the famous fire. In some spots, just barely a foot underground, students found temperatures to be 140 degrees.
"Find those areas, find the temperature of the steam coming out, soil samples around the area."
They have some pretty cool gadgets to work with, the same tools NASA would use to do similar research, like a hexicopter which not only takes regular pictures, but infrared ones, too.
Without a grant for this project, it would have cost almost $40,000, but when you have something like Centralia in your backyard, NASA wants you to check it out.
"When NASA says that they can give you some stuff like that, I don't know how you pass up that opportunity."
The students plan to take the data they found and compare it to studies from the professionals in the 1980s and 1990s.
And who knows? Maybe NASA will even want to take a peek at the findings too.
