On the morning of Sunday, …show more content…
Between the first recorded fire in eighteen sixty eight and the last in nineteen sixty nine, the Cuyahoga River caught fire thirteen times. A fire on the Cuyahoga in nineteen twelve took the lives of five people. In nineteen fifty two a fire caused over a million dollars’ worth in damages, the most destructive to date (Cuyahoga River Fire). As Michael Scott of The Plain Dealer wrote, “The river was increasingly filled with flammable liquids as it drained Cleveland industrial byproducts into an equally polluted Lake Erie” …show more content…
The Cuyahoga River fire sparked global media attention, most notably from a Time magazine article featuring a misleading photo of the carnage created by the river fire in nineteen fifty two, which was more disastrous than the fire in the summer of nineteen sixty nine (Rotman). People could not come to pass with the image of a river actually catching on fire, as the former EPA administrator Carol Browner stated "I will never forget a photograph of flames, fire, shooting right out of the water in downtown Cleveland… It was the summer of 1969 and the Cuyahoga River was burning.” Due to growing public interest, the National Geographic published a cover story on the river fire, featuring an informative graphic on the locations along the Cuyahoga River where it "receives the wastes of steel mills, chemical and meat-rendering plants and other industries” (Scott). Within the following year, congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA would assist in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was given the executive authority to write regulations and ensure that “all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn, and work” (“Our Mission and What We