Donora smog show released on Web

The Weather Channel is streaming online its new docudrama about the infamous Donora smog that killed more than 20 people in 1948.

Among those featured in the show is my mom, June, shown above, whose family lived directly downwind of steel and zinc mill pollution that likely caused disaster.

The premier airs at 9 p.m. Sunday. Check local listings to see when the show goes to repeats next week.

Bill Clinton on Obama in Little Washington

Former President Bill Clinton today made his second stop at Washington and Jefferson College in this election cycle to campaign for the Democratic candidate for the White House. His first visit to the campus in March involved a pitch for his wife, Hillary, who would later bow out of the race. This time around in Washington, Pa, he delivered a rousing preacher-man-style pitch for Barack Obama, and said the following in a 23-minute speech:

“Senator Obama is going to win this election and win it handily … unless people stop thinking about what is happening.”

“I have been there and this is going to be tough,” he said about the challenges facing the next president over the struggling economy, broken health-care system and America’s diminishing image in the world.

“I was for somebody else,” he said, adding that his wife is better suited for the White House.

“This is disgraceful folks,” he said about one in eight cancer patients being unable in the United States to afford medicine.

“You are being ripped off,” he said regarding how much Americans pay for health care when compared to the rest of the world.

“We need to free ourselves from the chains of foreign oil.” That needs no clarification.

“(Obama’s) going to have to take his hand off the Bible, race back down Pennsylvania Avenue, close the Oval Office door and get this country out of the ditch.”

(Photo: Stan Diamond Observer-Reporter)

Advice on air pollution in 1947

Devra Davis talks smog in Donora

DONORA, Pa. - Caskets occasionally washed to the street when heavy rain fell on a barren cemetery above a filthy zinc mill in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Decades of pollution from the Donora, Pa., mill's smokestacks had killed the vegetation at Gilmore Cemetery, including grass that would have protected its ground from erosion.

"It certainly was a testimony of what happened there when you couldn't get grass to grow on the ground over the graves," environmental scientist Devra Davis said, discussing the Donora smog of 1948 that killed 20 people and also was linked to the mill.

Davis, an author and native of Donora, made the remarks Monday while speaking in her hometown as the community commemorates the 60th anniversary of the nation's deadliest air pollution disaster.

"The funeral homes ran out of caskets," she told the crowd of local high school students and academics who attended the symposium at the borough building.

"The florists ran out of flowers for funerals," said Davis, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and a public health adviser to each U.S. president since Jimmy Carter.

While the exact nature of the smog never has been revealed by U.S. Steel or through the federal investigation, Davis said she has uncovered evidence that suggests at least one death was attributed to fluoride poisoning. An autopsy report that was recently uncovered indicates the victims had toxic levels of fluoride in their tissues.

The autopsy showed findings as if "someone had been hit by war gas," she said.

Steel mills generated large quantities of the chemical when the industry was booming, and some were facing millions of dollars in court claims involving alleged fluoride damages at the time of the smog.

Donora's smokestacks were not high enough to send their emissions over the steep valley hills, Davis said. The situation turned deadly over that Halloween weekend of 1948 when a large stagnant air mass trapped the mill gases over Donora and Webster, its downwind neighbor.

Most of the deaths occurred within a half-mile distance of the zinc mill. Another 600 residents were hospitalized before rain helped to wash away the fumes that Halloween afternoon.

Davis said it's important to get the bottom of the disaster that helped to spur the nation's clean air laws.

"'Donoras' are happening today in small areas of India and China," she said. "Why is Donora so important? We must warn those living in similar conditions today."

Observer-Reporter

Lip Dub IUT SRC Rouen 2008
by arcanes-prod

Thanking poor Donora for blue skies

DONORA, Pa. –While studying her lines for a play about Donora in 1948 when steel was booming, Destiney Gilmer was surprised to learn that times were not always tough in the struggling Pennsylvania borough.

“It’s hard to believe it was prosperous,” said Gilmer, a cast member in Ringgold High School’s new one-act play about the deadly Donora smog that killed at least 20 people about this time 60 years ago.

The high school brought the somber show to Donora Tuesday and Wednesday as residents there commemorate the disaster that became the catalyst for America’s clean air laws.

High school drama coach Leslie Rutherford wrote “We Know Blue: a 21st Century Thank You” at the request of the Donora Historical Society.

“There is pride that clean air started here,” Rutherford said after her play was well received in the Donora Municipal Building.

But the students “couldn’t wrap their minds around” the fact that 8,000 people were sickened by the smog when there are just 5,000 folks living in the borough today, she said. “They were amazed.”

The students took turns telling an abbreviated story about the smog and its legacy. They sang musical numbers from the era, including “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” They also pretended to tune into a corny live NBC radio broadcast of Fibber McGee and Molly”“ that entertained America about the time the smog settled over Donora.

There were 21 cast members, reflective of the unofficial number of people who died that Halloween weekend. Toward the end of the half-hour play, the students each lit a candle while announcing the victims’ names.

“It’s kind of hard to believe that that happened here,” student Leah Kramer said.

“And then it all fell apart,” her classmate, Brittany Recker, added.