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When Did Death Fog Victims Perish?
Ceh and Kirkwood were the first Donorans to die in the Donora Death Fog of 1948. At least 18 more followed, most of them the same night. Ceh died from sudden heart failure, Jeanie of asthma. Both of their death certificates indicate they died at 2:00 AM on the deadliest day of the smog, Saturday, October 30,…
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The Acceptable Boundaries of Racism in 1940s Donora
Stacey is right, race relations in the town were indeed strange, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone much, apparently not even black residents.
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Social Life in 1940s Donora
For decades during the mid-1900s a Chamber of Commerce sign at the Donora town line read, “NEXT TO YOURS THE BEST TOWN IN THE USA.” Donorans found an odd pride in being a second-best town, no matter where a visitor came from. Perhaps that was to be expected. The town didn’t originate naturally, as a…
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Could Donora Happen Again? Here in the US?
Certainly there have been strides made in the nation’s ability to combat air pollution. The greater Pittsburgh area, which once served basically as “Air Pollution Central” due to the many steel plants there, has seen continued progress (right) for many years, as have most cities throughout the U.S. We need to remain fully committed to…
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Do You Know Any of These Donora Smog Victims?
Four people are sometimes listed as having perished in smog, but for many reasons finding definitive information on them has proven extremely difficult. They are Steve Faulchak, Ruth Jones, and Alice Ward.
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The Life and Death of a Smog Victim
Susan was having trouble breathing that morning, but she kept ironing nonetheless. She also had a headache that wouldn’t go away. She had never had a health problem before, aside from a twisted ankle when she was young, and she had no history of asthma or other lung disease. Yet on this foggy day a…
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Saving Donorans on a Deadly Night
He strapped on the oxygen tank he kept at home, the green one, labeled TO BE FILLED WITH COMPRESSED OXYGEN ONLY, and walked out the back door, onto Thompson Avenue, into the dark fog. Bill Schempp at a fire practice Walking had become so difficult by then that he dropped to his hands and knees…
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Donorans, Dressings, and the Fight Against Cancer
Cancer was once a word uttered soto voce, a word so dangerous it would conjure demons and visions of the Spectre of Death. A barely-known radiologist named Marjorie B. Illig helped to change that, and the women of Donora readily jumped aboard her world-changing vision.
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What’s In a Word? The Etymology of Smog
“The word thus coined is a contraction of smoke and fog — ‘smog’ — and its introduction was received with applause as being eminently expressive and appropriate. It is not exactly a pretty word, but it fits very well the thing it represents, and it has only to become known to be popular.”
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Gone Was the Wind
If even a slight breeze had strolled through the Donora valley that week the smoke would have broken up, giving residents some respite. But no, there was no breeze to be had, not in Donora, nor in Monessen to the south, nor in Monongahela to the north.
