That's a little eerie, and I feel for those who want to remain

in their homes, although I wouldn't want to stay myself.

After 50 years, fire still burns underneath Pa. town

Centralia was already a coal-mining town in decline when the fire department set the town's landfill ablaze on May 27, 1962, in an ill-fated attempt to tidy up for Memorial Day. The fire wound up igniting the coal outcropping and, over the years, spread to the vast network of mines beneath homes and businesses, threatening residents with poisonous gases and dangerous sinkholes.

After a contentious battle over the future of the town, the side that wanted to evacuate won out. By the end of the 1980s, more than 1,000 people had moved and 500 structures demolished under a $42 million federal relocation program.

But some holdouts refused to go — even after their houses were seized through eminent domain in the early 1990s. They said the fire posed little danger to their part of town, accused government officials and mining companies of a plot to grab the rights to billions of dollars' worth of anthracite coal, and vowed to stay put.

Loss and grief in the news today

For Poland, plane crash in Russia rips open old wounds

The plane went down in fog carrying the Polish president and first lady aboard, among other leading figures in Poland.

It was, in a sense, a nation colliding with its past: The aircraft ran aground on a patch of earth that has symbolized the Soviet-era repressions that shaped much of the 20th century, near the remote Russian forest glade called Katyn where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed and dumped in unmarked graves by Soviet secret police in 1940.

The toll cut a swath through Poland's elite. The 97 dead included the army chief of staff, the head of the National Security Office, the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the deputy parliament speaker, the civil rights commissioner and other members of parliament.

Also aboard the plane were war veterans and surviving family members of Poles killed by the Soviets. There was 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski, Poland's last "president-in-exile" during the Soviet years. And Anna Walentynowicz, the shipyard worker whose dismissal in 1980 sparked the Solidarity union protests that eventually led to the collapse of Polish communism and made the symbolic first chink in the Berlin Wall.

And here in the US:

Mine Area Mourning After Missing Bodies Found

Search crews at the Upper Big Branch Coal mine discovered early Saturday the bodies of four missing miners from Monday's devastating explosion.

They started bringing out miners' bodies two at a time in ambulances past the state troopers' salute, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod.

"We did not receive the miracle that we prayed for," West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said to reporters just after midnight, confirming that slim hope had turned to no hope for the four missing miners. "We have accounted for four miners that have been unaccounted for. We have a total of 29 brave miners we are recovering at this time."

The miners died in what appeared to be a methane gas explosion a thousand feet underground and several miles into the sprawling mine.

My thoughts and prayers go to the people affected by these terrible tragedies.

Grief and tragedy

Peru quake aftershocks rattle survivors, rescuers

The death toll is up above 500 and potentially rising, as the USGS upgrades the quake to an 8.0 on the Richter scale.

3 Rescue Workers Killed at Utah Mine

No one knows if the miners who were trapped by the original cave-in are alive. Now three people are dead as authorities try to determine if the rescue effort should continue.

The world needs more Hazel Kings

From yesterday:

Service today for coal country activist

She served as a WAC in World War II, then for 21 years in the Air Force at a time there weren't many women in the service. She retired to her native Harlan County and took up the fight to keep strip mining and other coal-related environmental hazards from happening--or at least from going unnoticed. She fought for the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act and became a citizen enforcer, blowing the whistle on spills and the like. She worked so closely with the inspectors from the Office of Surface Mining that some people thought she was a government agent.

Imagine living a life where so much of what you did bettered life for others, really made an impact. Not many of us can say as much, can we?