The Cuyahoga Fire Tragedy

Introduction

The Cuyahoga River runs throughout the northeast Ohio and empties its waters in Lake Erie in the USA. The river flows through the Cuyahoga valley national park. The river runs through the city of Cleveland and the waters of the river provided a scenic and attractive appearance to residents of the city (Pentland & Wood, 2013). That was before the emergence of the industrial revolution in late 1800s and 1900s these industries emptied most of their wastes into the river. With time these wastes which also included flammable wastes and oils accumulated in the river making the wastes unfit for survival of aquatic living organisms. Another worth noting was that there were also a lot of suspended flammable solid wastes on the water surfaces (Kirkpatrick, 2011) . Well at first the concern of a possibility of these flammable compounds to at one point were viewed inevitable but hell broke loose on a Sunday morning in June 1969 when the river caught fire (Dutka, 2014). Unlike previous times where only small fires were seen this time it was a big one. This sparked a lot of concern to the senate on the role of preserving the environment clean because at that time no environmental conservation watchdog had been formed yet.

After its independence America underwent rapid industrial growth between the late 1800s and 1900s and as the country took huge milestones when it came to development the economic perspective was the centre of focus while preservation of the environment as well intergration of environmental conservation in development was ignored (Dutka, 2014). This cause not only water pollution but also air. The city of Cleveland was mainly made up of oil plants as well as steel mills that emptied their wastes in the water. Sludge too as well as water from cooling industrial plants would be disposed in the waters without undergoing any form of treatment (Kirkpatrick, 2011). 

The fire started because there was a lot of ignorance on the...