Reply #6: I've been reading about this one since the 60s [View All]

[Warpy]

and there was a fight just to get them compensation for their property in the early days. First they tried venting the gases, cheaper than buying up the town, and that's where those steam vents came from. As people continued to sicken from CO poisoning and more ground collapsed, the state realized it was going to be cheaper to buy them out than to put them into bariatric chambers once a week to clear the CO from their systems.

This is all because a bunch of bureaucrats didn't listen to geologists and engineers and spend the money to kill that fire in the beginning, when it was small enough to be controlled.