Imagine waking up on a regular hot summer morning for your routine jogging exercise and smelling burnt diesel fuel mixed with smoke as the stench pollutes your home. You exit your house and see the most frightening and jaw-dropping sights that would give war veterans recurring episodes of Post Traumatic Stress. Your city’s river is on fire!! Not only that, there is bellowing smoke that’s reaching over 350 feet in the air and spreading it’s toxic fumes everywhere within a 5 block radius of the river! The event looked very similar to the 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack and even more so like the Battle of Blackwater episode in Game of Thrones when Lord Stannis’ fleet is destroyed by the green flamed “Wildfire”.
That is what most people had to experience the morning of June 22, 1969 in Cleveland, OH. The reasons why the river was set ablaze dates back to the Industrial Revolution. Since the 1870’s the Cuyahoga River has been a waste dumping ground for industrial factories. Many hazardous waste and chemicals have accumulated in the river which severely dropped the biodiversity in the river. The river was set on fire by sparks from a nearby train as it applied its brakes. The blaze lasted 3 hours and caused 1.1 million dollars in property damage. However, the ‘69 fire wasn’t the first time the river was set ablaze. Before hand, since the 1870’s there has been 13 fires on the Cuyahoga River but the 1969 fire received nationwide attention thanks to Time magazine.
This put severe stress on Cleveland’s mayor, Carl Stokes, who asked his brother, Louis a US Representative, to help pass the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Great Lakes Quality Agreement Act which both helped maintain the preservation of all bodies of water in the Great Lakes area. Since then the Cuyahoga River is now crystal clear, drinkable and home to more than 60 different species of fish.
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