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Somehow I managed to miss an anniversary from my childhood: It was 45 years ago last Sunday that the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio:
I was in high school at the time. My family didn’t live in the Cleveland metro area, but close enough that we mostly watched Cleveland TV stations, and regularly read the main Cleveland newspaper, the “Plain Dealer.” The fire was definitely news when it happened, and it became an icon for the environmental-protection movement that was starting about that time.
However, in retrospect, it doesn’t represent the depths of environmental degradation along the river, because it was in fact the last major fire on the river. There had been worse fires in the past, and Cleveland had been working on cleaning up the river before 1969:
The fable of the burning river, 45 years later (Washington Post)
I was in high school at the time. My family didn’t live in the Cleveland metro area, but close enough that we mostly watched Cleveland TV stations, and regularly read the main Cleveland newspaper, the “Plain Dealer.” The fire was definitely news when it happened, and it became an icon for the environmental-protection movement that was starting about that time.
However, in retrospect, it doesn’t represent the depths of environmental degradation along the river, because it was in fact the last major fire on the river. There had been worse fires in the past, and Cleveland had been working on cleaning up the river before 1969:
The fable of the burning river, 45 years later (Washington Post)
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