Drone Gathers Data on Centralia, Pa.'s 52-Year-Old Fire

(TNS) — From a technical sense, a remote-sensing project at the burning former mine town of Centralia, Pa., will offer NASA important data about gases, temperatures and soil conditions that can be entered into a database to be studied and used to predict how long the underground blaze might burn. Plus, from a human perspective, it’s also pretty cool, according to Michael Geiswhite’s 28 pre-calculus students from North Schuylkill Junior-Senior High School on Thursday morning.

Geiswhite is a Sunbury resident and a 2003 graduate of Shikellamy High.

Juniors Logan Bell and Olivia Auld found the project a fun experience. The students were observing infrared video from a drone that had just been flown into the air.

"We’re looking for hot spots out of place," Bell said. "We’ll mark it on the video and check it out later."

"Anything that’s abnormally hot or cold," Auld added. "The cemetery rocks looks pretty high in temperature."

The remote sensing project, funded through a Math and Science Partnership grant from Chester County Intermediate Unit, collects data on Centralia that is submitted to NASA.

The fire began in 1962 at the town dump and ignited an exposed coal vein, eventually forcing an exodus that emptied Centralia of more than 1,000 people. Save a handful of residents who remain, nearly every house was demolished.

"You don’t hear about sites like this often, and it’s close to where the students are from," said Geiswhite. "A lot of their parents and grandparents were alive when it all happened, so it’s kind of personal for them, too."

The in-field research includes flying a hexacoptor drone to take video from the sky, track heat spots with infrared cameras and monitor wind and weather. It also includes taking soil and air samples and recording temperatures of hot spots.

"We’ll take the data, compare it to other data, try to find trends, and make predictions on how long it will continue to burn," Geiswhite said.

All data will be submitted to NASA, but Geiswhite said he does not know the agency’s intention with the data.

The cameras are observed by the students while the drone is flown by Academy of Model Aeronautics licensed Tony Minnella, who has been involved in other Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics and NASA-related projects in Milton, Hughesville and Loyalsock.

Minnella, who has been flying radio-controlled model helicopters since 1975, said the project is a good learning tool for the students, but also he gets to fly a NASA drone.

"It’s nerve-wracking because it’s expensive," he said. "But it handles pretty well."

The students were also set into the field with equipment to check out vents.

©2015 The Daily Item (Sunbury, Pa.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.