Chasing air: From a slag heap to a ghost shopping mall

WEST MIFFLIN, Pa. — When Chris Kelly was a kid growing up in Homestead, like most kids from working-class families, he would pile in the family car and drive out to watch the glow of the slag heap in nearby West Mifflin.

“The hot molten slag was leftover waste from the steel-making process that would come by railroad from the mills in nearby Braddock, Duquesne, and my hometown of Homestead. When they poured it from these huge ladles, it looked like a volcano with lava streaming down the hill,” he explained.