Since 1962 a coal fire has been burning in the old mine workings under Centralia, Pennsylvania. By the end of the 1980s more than a thousand people had taken relocation money and gone, and in 1992 the state claimed every property in the borough. A few residents refused to leave, and in 2013 they settled with the state: each may stay at home for as long as they live, and each house is condemned when its owner dies. The 2020 census counted five people.

So Centralia has an end date that isn’t on any calendar. It isn’t counted in years. It’s counted in people. Every town loses people, but slowly enough that new ones move in to take their place. In Centralia the door only opens one way. The fire was never really the clock. It is the reason nobody new may come, and that turns out to be the one thing a town can’t survive.