Officials feared that the village of Jeansville would become the next Centralia because of a decades-old mine fire burning beneath it.

But thanks to a multimillion dollar public-private partnership, no residents will be forced to leave their homes like the residents of Centralia were in 1992.

The Jeansville mine fire, located on the Carbon-Luzerne county line is extinguished thanks to a public-private partnership between the Department of Environmental Protection and a coal company.

DEP held an information session last week for residents of the village of Jeansville, located just outside of Hazleton. They informed residents that they believe the fire is out.

“The department sees no evidence of a fire still present at the Jeansville Mine Fire site,” said spokeswoman Colleen Connolly.

DEP waited four months to announce the fire was out after the mining company did. In October, Hazleton Shaft held a news conference with then U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Luzerne, to announce the fire was extinguished. DEP said at the time that they wanted Atlantic Shaft to drill more bore holes before they said definitively that it was out.

Barletta secured federal funding so DEP could afford the $9.3 million contract with Hazleton Shaft to extinguish the mine fire in 2015.

DEP said at last week’s meeting that they feel the fire is out because there is no evidence of burning coal refuse, and no recent temperatures indicating hot or burning material.

Hazleton Shaft, which has an active permit to mine anthracite coal at the Jeansville site, extinguished the fire while it continued active mining operations. When it would come across burning material, the company would extinguish it with water. It also dug a large isolation trench across the south side of the site. Hazleton Shaft cleared approximately 167 acres and excavated 3 million cubic yards. It blasted approximately 263,470 cubic yards.

To extinguish the fire, they used 41.7 million gallons of water from public sources, and another 1.9 million gallons from mine pools on the site.

DEP said in October that another 14 million gallons of firefighting foam was also used.

During the project, the site was identified as a potential bat habitat, so another project was undertaken to restore the habitat.