Analysts disagree about the specific cause of the Centralia fire. David Dekok, author of "Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire", concluded that it started with an attempt to clean up the town landfill. In May 1962, the Centralia Borough Council hired five members of the volunteer fire company to clean up the town landfill, located in an abandoned strip-mine pit next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery just outside the borough limits. This had been done prior to Memorial Day in previous years, when the landfill was in a different location.