As you explore St. Clair-Superior, you will see a traditional, turn of the century, working-class, immigrant neighborhood. Yet there is a small area, no larger than a city block, which feels out of place. Instead of the multistory frame houses that mark a historic mixed-use neighborhood like St. Clair-Superior, these brick houses hearken to postwar suburban developments like those in Parma, Ohio. In fact, residents of these houses refer to this small pocket of St. Clair-Superior as “Little Parma.” While the out-of-place architecture alone makes it noteworthy, Little Parma is important for another reason. Little Parma, as well as nearby Grdina Park, marks just some of the area destroyed by the worst fire in Cleveland’s history, the East Ohio Gas Company Fire.

Originally built in 1902, the ten-acre East Ohio Gas Company plant, spanning from East 55th to 63rd Streets, provided natural gas to most of Cleveland, including many businesses in the neighborhood. By 1940, part of the plant was converted to a liquefaction, storage, and regasification facility, which was one of the most modern gas plants in the country, safely storing large quantities of liquefied gas in four separate holding tanks. While it might seem odd today to have such a volatile substance amongst residential homes, in early industrial cities before affordable transportation it was practically a necessity for laborers to live close to their place of employment. A gas storage facility was simply one among many industrial operations one would expect to find in a typical working-class neighborhood of the time. However, given the plant's modernity and safety, people living in the area felt they had no reason to fear. That is, until a fateful day in October when fire fell from the sky.

It was an average Friday, a cool breeze blowing over the lake, and the sounds of industry in the air. At the East Ohio Gas Company, however, an equipment malfunction was about to change the neighborhood forever. To most witnesses, it sounded like a clap of thunder, an innocuous sound, nothing deserving much attention. It was not until workers saw a stream of liquefied gas pouring out of one of the cylindrical tanks that people began to panic. As the liquefied gas flowed into the street, it vaporized into a thick white fog that slowly snaked into the street. Given the incredibly volatile nature of the expanding fog, it was not long before it ignited, either due to friction or an open flame. The explosion that followed destroyed the tank, while at the same time creating fireballs which began falling into the neighborhood. For nearby residents, the initial shaking of the explosion was little cause for alarm. After all, the heavily industrialized neighborhood often felt vibrations as factories used drop forge hammers. The hot air, however, told a far different story: the city was about to burn.

While the initial blast created the most devastation, there were at least six more major explosions that occurred after the first fire, continuing the inferno that was quickly spreading over 108 acres. One explosion, occurring about 20 minutes after Tank No. 4 failed, was a result of yet another holding tank erupting, sending more fuel into the already devastating fire. Thankfully, the other two holding tanks managed to withstand the heat, which at times topped 3,000 degrees, and stress of the fire, preventing the already devastating inferno from getting any larger. Nevertheless, the failures were enough to engulf houses and automobiles.

Cleveland’s fire department were quick to respond but, due to technical limitations, had difficulty with communications. The department bravely fought the fire for hours while dealing with intense heat, explosions, and equipment literally sinking into the ground. By 7:00 pm, the assistant fire chief reported the fire was contained between East 55th and. 63rd Streets. By midnight James Granger, the fire chief, declared that the fire was under control. Work continued for another two days and by Sunday, save a stubborn pile of coal, the fire was finally extinguished.

The East Ohio Gas Company Fire marks one of Cleveland’s most devastating disasters, destroying 79 houses, two factories, and 217 automobiles and damaging 85 houses and 18 factories. Property destruction, while devastating, pales in comparison to the lives lost in the fire. One hundred thirty civilians lost their lives to the fire, 98 of whom were employees of the company. Shortly after the explosion, the two undamaged tanks were carefully emptied, keeping the area safe from further travesty. In order to help, City Council appropriated $200,000 to the area for infrastructure repair. Similarly, the recently formed St. Clair-Norwood Rehabilitation Corporation raised money for victims, bought plots, and built sixteen reasonably priced houses to sell to victims of the disaster. These relief structures are the very houses that comprise Little Parma today.

The victims of the explosion and fire are memorialized in Highland Park Cemetery, where the unidentified bodies were buried, a stark reminder of one of Cleveland’s most devastating disasters. Today, Little Parma remains a unique and vibrant section of the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, showing a city's ability to move on but also marking a dark chapter in Cleveland’s history.

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Cleveland once ranked as one of the nation’s leaders in garment manufacturing, thanks in large part to the Cleveland Worsted Mills. An immense sight in its heyday, the plant suffered years of neglect and decline after its closure, until a fire destroyed much of the complex. Today the industrial giant is largely forgotten, but the impact it had on Cleveland and environmental laws has remained.

In 1878, Joseph Turner started the Turner Worsted Mill, renamed the Cleveland Worsted Mill in 1902. The Cleveland Plant, located at 5932 Broadway Avenue, handled every aspect of the worsted cloth process, from scouring and sorting wool to boiling the cloth. At the height of production in the 1920s, the mill ran more than 500 looms and consumed 25-35,000 pounds of wool daily.

As one of the leading employers of the area's large immigrant population, namely Poles and Czechs, the company expanded rapidly. In 1908 it completed a $200,000 addition, including a six-story brick steel factory building and a three-story office building. To ease employee concerns about safety, it constructed exterior stairways and elevator shafts in the new building and also added elevators in existing buildings. With the addition the facility became the second largest plant for worsted production in the country.

Despite its national recognition and financial success, the company had a difficult relationship with its employees. In 1934, the plant closed for almost three months due to striking over union discrimination. In 1937, complaints were made against the company for “terrorizing and intimidating employees” to keep them from joining the Textile Workers Organizing Committee and workers again went on strike for a few weeks. Striking broke out again in August 1955, brought on by a breakdown in talks between company officials and the Textile Workers Organization. Rather than continue talks, Cleveland Worsted Mills chose to liquidate its assets in January 1956.

Although the company was gone, disaster struck the plant again in 1993. In April, investigators found 100 barrels of potentially hazardous materials left improperly stored in the warehouse complex. The material was found to be flammable and reports state the building had no working sprinkler system. Investigators determined that the barrels would remain in the building until they knew what they contained and who was responsible for them as there was some dispute over who owned the property. While city officials were trying to determine who owned the property, an arson fire destroyed the complex on July 4. City fire officials were aware of the danger the barrels within the mill presented and had already devised a plan to fight the blaze they correctly figured was inevitable.

As a result of the fire, new laws were put in place with tougher punishments for environmental offenders. It became a crime for companies to walk away from a site without cleaning up contamination. Moreover, the courts could force them to pay for the cleanup, and any damage incurred was the company’s responsibility. Environmental nuisances were added to the state's nuisance abatement laws that allow the state to take over such properties.

The city spent $3 million to clean up the debris from the fire and fill in the land. A few years later, it became the Boys and Girls Club of Cleveland. The organization runs a recreational and educational site on more than five acres of the 12.5-acre complex.

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Wednesday, May 15, 1929 was just another busy day at the Cleveland Clinic. A steamfitter had arrived early that morning to repair a leaky steam pipe in the sub-basement, which had been converted into a storage room for the hospital's x-ray film. This routine repair morphed into a national tragedy as the exposed steam came into contact with approximately 3-4 tons of volatile nitrate x-ray film.

Nitrocellulose film was developed by the Eastman Kodak Company during the late 1880s for use in both the field of medicine, as well as the motion picture industry. The Eastman Kodak Company's nitrate film developed a penchant for being highly volatile, unstable and extraordinarily flammable. If nitrate film ignites, it becomes extremely difficult to extinguish. Immersing burning film in water may not extinguish it, and could actually increase the amount of deadly gas emitted.

The steam acted as the primary catalyst, which caused the highly unstable nitrate film to decompose and emit a poisonous cloud of gas. The gas soon ignited creating two violent explosions, which rocked the clinic, practically blowing the roof off of the building. The explosions forced deadly fumes at a high rate of pressure into the pipe tunnel system and up the pipe ducts into nearly every room of every floor of the hospital almost immediately. The yellowish-brown smoke also found its way up the major stairways between each floor, thus trapping most of the 225 occupants of the hospital in an inescapable, terrifying cloud of imminent death. The toxic vapors caught most of the victims by surprise, as several doctors and nurses collapsed at their desks, while others only managed a step or two in their escape before kneeling over and dying. One hundred and twenty three victims almost instantaneously perished that day.

A few of the victims were miraculously able to escape the hospital, rescued by firemen, policemen or volunteers. Unfortunately, anyone who had inadvertently inhaled any quantity of the fumes succumbed to and died from the toxic vapor, some soon after and others not for several days. It had been reported by dozens of witnesses that the bodies of the first victims turned yellow and later green after being brought out of the building. This ghastly, macabre scene left an indelible legacy that forced officials to reexamine safety procedures.

The historic disaster that occurred at the Cleveland Clinic was unprecedented in its time and it captured the attention of people on a national, and even worldwide scale. Several of the investigating commissions that were charged with finding the cause of the fumes and fire made amendments to policy that would profoundly alter fire-fighting practices, hospital procedures and the methodology behind the proper use and storage of hazardous chemicals and materials in the United States and throughout the world.

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On 4 March 1908, a tragedy occurred that prompted changes in school safety across the United States. About nine o'clock in the morning on March 4, 1908, nine-year-old Niles Thompson jumped out of a window at Lakeview Elementary to escape a fire that had started in the basement of his school. Nearly two hundred children who had also been lucky enough to escape watched as flames engulfed the Collinwood school. Niles frantically ran among his schoolmates, searching for his little brother, Thomas. Once Niles realized his brother was not one of the safe children, he ran back into the school to save Thomas. Neither of the two Thompson boys walked out of their school again.

Niles and Thomas Thompson were among the 172 children and two teachers who were trapped inside the school and died in the fire. Nineteen of these children could not be identified. That weekend, the entire Collinwood community mourned for those lost. According to Cleveland's Plain Dealer, "The village seemed to be one vast procession of hearses and carriages. . . . Scarcely did one funeral carriage pass before another came into sight wending its way with its sorrowful burden to the burying grounds. . . . Those who had no dead to mourn stood on the streets watching the grim procession as they passed. There was scarcely a dry eye in Collinwood." The following Monday, memorial and funeral services were held at Lake View Cemetery for all the victims of the Collinwood school fire. Businesses in the Collinwood neighborhood were closed for the day out of respect for the dead and their families. Lakeview Elementary children that survived served as pallbearers and other Cleveland school children made memorials in the shape of flowers.

A number of building deficiencies contributed to the fire's start and to so many children getting trapped inside the blazing building. According to the State Deputy Fire Marshal, who investigated the burnt building, the fire began when an overheated furnace ignited exposed dry wood in the boiler room. Obstruction of a clear pathway to the exits, narrow stairs, and the school's highly flammable structure were blamed for the fire and consequent deaths of so many children. This "awakened the state to action for better protection against fire in schools and public buildings." Following the Lakeview school fire, many changes were made in school building in Cleveland and throughout the country. For the former, these changes included iron stair cases, concrete floors, fireproof coverings for pipes, the placement of doors directly in front of stair cases, and unobstructed doorways. Everywhere in the United States, laws were passed that required enclosed stairwells and special door latches.

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The story of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969 - the event that sparked pop songs, lit the imagination of an entire nation, and badly tarnished a city's reputation - is built more on myths than reality. Yes, an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River - polluted from decades of industrial waste - caught fire on a Sunday morning in June 1969 near the Republic Steel mill, causing about $100,000 worth of damage to two railroad bridges. Initially the fire drew little attention, either locally or nationally. The '69 fire was not even the first time that the river burned. Dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, the river had caught fire on several other occasions.

The picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire that ended up in Time Magazine a month later - a truly arresting image showing flames leaping up from the water, completely engulfing a ship - was actually from a much more serious fire in November 1952. No picture of the '69 river fire is known to exist.

Throughout much of Cleveland's history, water pollution did not trouble the city's residents very much. Instead, water pollution was viewed as a necessary consequence of the industry that had brought prosperity to the city. This attitude began to change in the 1960s as ideas associated with what would become known as environmentalism took shape. In 1968, Cleveland residents overwhelmingly passed a $100 million bond initiative to fund the Cuyahoga's cleanup. Also, by this time deindustrialization was somewhat alleviating the pollution problem, as factories closed or cut back operations. Ironically, the city and its residents were beginning to take responsibility for the cleanliness of the river in the years before the infamous fire of 1969.

The '69 fire, then, was not really the terrifying climax of decades of pollution, but rather the last gasp of an industrial river whose role was beginning to change. Nevertheless, Cleveland became a symbol of environmental degradation. The Time article contributed to this, as did the notoriety of Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes. Stokes, who was the first black mayor of a major city when elected in 1967, became deeply involved with the issue, holding a press conference at the site of the fire the following day and testifying before Congress - including his brother US Representative Louis Stokes - to urge greater federal involvement in pollution control. The Stokes brothers' advocacy played a part in the passage of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972. In Cleveland, a number of Cleveland State University students celebrated the inaugural Earth Day in 1970 by marching from campus to the river to protest pollution.

Even though it has been misunderstood, the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire did help bring about positive change. The river's water quality improved during the following decades, and business investors capitalized on this by converting parts of the Flats' abandoned industrial landscape into an entertainment district featuring restaurants, nightclubs, and music venues.

Much of the industry that both made Cleveland rich and caused its river to burn may never be coming back, but Clevelanders are meeting this challenge by reshaping their city to reflect its current realities.

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