Todd Domboski

Todd Domboski was a native of Centralia, Pennsylvania notable for the attention his near-death experience brought to the town’s underground mine fire.

Accident
On Valentine’s Day 1981, Domboski, then aged twelve, fell into a sinkhole caused by an underground mine fire that had been burning for nearly 20 years.

He was saved only after his older cousin, Eric Wolfgang, pulled him from the mouth of the hole before he could plunge to his probable death. The incident brought national attention to Centralia as an investigatory group including a state representative, a state senator, a mine safety director, were coincidentally on a walking tour of Domboski's neighborhood at the time of his incident. A reporter from the Shenandoah Evening Herald was there as well and advantageously snapped Todd's picture.

An excerpt, from Joan Quigley's The Day the Earth Caved In, decribes the incident,

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