The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 218 - The Donora Smog Disaster

Episode Date: November 10, 2016

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the Donora Smog Disaster. SOURCESTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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everything to you. Lease none on 2023 Tacoma Access Cab TRD off-road from 131 weekly for 60 months at 8.39% with 4950 down in Stock Nagayon. Visit shop Toyota.ca or your local Ontario Toyota dealer today. It's time to Toyota. You're listening to the dollop. This is a bi-weekly American History podcast. Each week I, Dave Anthony, read a story from American History to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. It's a fat cat, dude. Huh? It's a fat cat. It's not fat, he's long. Jose just rolled over like... I mean what is that? He's got a little like tick. He's got like a little homeless

street tick. That looks like a hair sausage. Okay well that is obviously offensive. I mean that is and not wrong. Look at him though he's just like a little he's like an adorable missile. He's just like a he's a hairy bomb you just want to hug. Look at him he's on guard. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to Tickly Quad. Okay. You are Queen Fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle and do a thing. 1661. Whoa. Air pollution has burned around for a long time. In 1661? Yeah. It's it there was air pollution

and I think that the 1200s and the King of England it was like you guys stop burning stuff. I don't know if that was exactly. We didn't listen to the King. I don't know if that was the exact language. Hey guys stop burning stuff. In 1661 England John Evelyn published The Inconvenience of the Air and Smoke of London Disappated. Did he also claim he invented the internet? And book titles are not great back then. That's so long. It was a call to clean up the air of the city. The writing described the effects of air pollution on the people of London. Quote, in London her inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure and thick mist

accompanied by a fulling fullingonous and filthy vapor which renders them obnoxious to a thousand inconveniences. Yeah. Corrupting the lungs and disordering the entire habit of their bodies so that cathars. Sticks. Sticks. P-H-T-I-S-I-C-K-S. Shouldn't be a word. Six. Shouldn't be a word. Not allowed. Coughs and consumptions rage more in this one city than the whole earth besides. Wow. He's saying London. London's Hong Kong. London's fucked up. Yeah. It's fucked up shit. Yeah. It's filthy. He recommended burning coal instead of wood. Yeah well look I mean this is the guy you want to be listening to. He gets how it

works. Yeah. And recommended being coal instead of wood and relocating the worst polluting industries outside the city. You can actually see Monet's paintings. Some of them have captured the London fog. Yeah. When he painted city scapes. But the London fog was always I thought an actual fog. No I mean the London smog. The London smog. Okay. But he's actually you can actually see it. Right. Just tremendous artwork. Yeah but it's also hard you know painting it's hard for a painting to be hard evidence. Your honor if you see right there there's a second gunman in the painting back then they used paintings in court. Well this

implicates me I changed my plea to guilty your honor. You can clearly see in that painting I was not at the party I said I was. But with new sources of technology came new sources of pollution. The industrial revolution exploited the use of fossil fuels. This is gonna have fun twists. Smoke pouring out of chimneys became a symbol of power and optimism. Optimism is interesting. Yeah that's what they were like this is gonna be great. Boy I've got a good feeling about this. Yes so the industrial revolution by the 18th century in first part of the 19th century coal was being used on a large scale as factories

produced products and filthy air. This particularly affected people in living in cities. By the early 20th century as people continued to flock to city smoking chimneys just became a part of daily life. Like that's how we do. But a lot of it like a lot of it was heat-based though right. Heat-based. Yeah you like in your home. Yeah yeah sure there's for sure people burn coal almost everybody burn coal. It's like 97% of people at this point burn coal. You know when I was a kid there's a picture of me in a fireplace in England eating coal. Sure. And I have coal all around my mouth and I'm eating coal and instead of

stopping me people took pictures of me. Well people didn't know how stupid you were until that moment. No no no please that's insulting they knew way ahead of that. They knew very early. Yeah they knew very early. He's an idiot. Look at that little idiot boy. He's eating rocks. I remember one time I showed my mother I drew a square at like age six and I was really proud and she was super let down by my pride. Oh you like that too. I was like look at that. She was like oh dear. Oh mommy's gonna have a little cry. And mommy doesn't need milk in her tears and I never mind to fuck that up.

Never been so sad. Look look glad if he made a square. Mom's crying. Mom's sweating from her eyes again. Yes yes love yes love. So when people when people would come from the country into the city they would be like what is with the smell. Okay. And the people in the cities would say it was fine it's totally normal because that's what they're used to. Oh you mean the smell of optimism. That's hope my friend. That's a good feeling. Some would say that's the smell of money. Oh right yeah because it was their job. Sure. If you want a job the smell in the dirty air was part of it. Right. Most companies

had drawings of their factories on their letterheads and those drawings had huge chimneys pouring out smoke. Yeah. It was as simple that the company was doing well. And again evidence is in drawings. Boy look at the size of that building on that letterhead. That's someone I've got to be in business with. Excuse me sir but you've got nine smoke stacks on your letterhead and smoke is pouring out. How may I get in business with you. Well that's just how popular we are. And then you get there and there's none. Wait. This is fraud. Well now hold on. You have smoke stacks on your letterhead. Now well yes but let me tell

you let me explain myself. You sell fruit. Well yes but let me explain myself. Right. We sell fruit here. What about the smoke stacks I thought you were a good company. I had someone make letterhead. Nobody wants to work with fruit. You put some apples on top. People might come or no. Be my friend. I would like to leave. Be my friend. Be my friend. So smoke equaled progress. There's our title. It was a good time. Oh my god. Your cat just I mean that your cat just picked it's pushed itself up. That's how he sits. Pushed himself up on the arm rest and then sat down like a bro. He does sit down on his butt. It sits down like that. He

loves it. I don't even know what just happened. Some cities tried to do something about what seemed like an obvious problem. In 1881 Chicago passed the first smoke ordinance in the U.S. but it wasn't easy in other places. In the 19th and early 20th early 20th century St. Louis was known as the country's dirtiest city. Okay. In 1893 St. Louis tried to pass this ordinance. The mission into the open air of a dance black or thick gray smoke within the corporate limits of the city of St. Louis is hereby declared to be a nuisance. Was that the title? That's I'm reading though. That's the whole order. There's

more. Okay. The owner's occupants managers and agents of the establishment locomotives or premises from which dense black or thick gray smoke is emitted or discharged shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction therefore shall pay a fine of not less than 10 or more than $50. Okay. So they're cracking down. They're bringing it fucking hard. Right. The reason that they said black or gray is because some cities passed one that said no black smoke and then people be like it's great. Yeah. Our factory makes gray smoke. So I know what to tell you. Oh my god. The Heitzberg Packing and Prevision

Company a horrible polluter fought back in court. It went all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court who declared the law invalid. Yep. Quote while it is entirely competent for the city to pass a reasonable ordinance looking at the suppression of smoke when it becomes a nuisance to property or health or annoying the public at large. This ordinance must be held void because it exceeds the power of the city under its charter to declare and abate nuisances. Oh my god. So they're saying that it's okay for the city to pass an ordinance if it has the power to do so. But since the state had not given it the

power to declare it a nuisance then it can't. So more pollution. Perfect. You see where it comes from. Yeah. Doctors by the 1930s began to recognize the smog enveloping cities was bad for people's health. But how could they change it. Cole was the mechanism that made the cities move. But people began speaking out against pollution. There is a document made in 1939 which was called. I should know this. Oh boy. I don't have it here. I think it was called the city. Yeah. It was called the city. The city. Is that a. So the titles are either insanely long or just far too short. I mean it's not the best name. The city. Yeah. Ready. Yeah.

We've got to face life in these shacks and alleys. We've got to let our children take their chances here with rickets, typhoid, TB or worse. They draw up blank. The kids. They have no business here. There's no man's land. This slag heap wasn't meant for them. There's poison in the air. We breathe. There's poison in the river. The fog and smoke blow right up in Chokas. So it was. Wow. That is a little dark. Holy shit. I'm like genuinely terrified now. We're so much worse off. Oh god, the smoke's coming up and it's choking us. Yeah, Rick. It's the people. Yeah, there's all kinds of the smoke's going to come up and beat the living shit out of you. Oh, I can't tell you how much smoke has been kicking little kids in their genitals. The kids. The smoke's molesting your children. It's a dark time. So that was Denora which sprang to life in 1901 because of its location near natural resources and there was a river. Okay. Several companies came including the Union Steel Company, the Carnegie Steel Company, the Matthew Woven Wire Fence Company, the Denora Zinc Works. The Zinc Works was the largest in the world. How do you do? Okay. The Pennsylvania Railroad also brought trains to the town and of course all of this brought smog. Right. Well, you mean prosperity. Prosperity and happiness. You mean the dark clouds of happiness. Optimus cumulus. But to the people there, it was a normal thing. Bill Shamp, a kid living in Denora said, quote, it was a normal thing to be around and have it around us all the time. Yeah, the smoke's good for you. See, mister? Environment was normal. This is right for you. See, because we grew up in it. We grew up in it. It's here. This is what we do. This thing basically raised me. Charles Stacey said, quote, we didn't see much sunshine here in Denora because there was so much smoke from the steel work and Zinc Works. Oh, God. This was going on all the time. I don't think we understood there was sun and vegetation and beautiful surroundings like there were in many other places in the country. Oh, my God. Back then, a big trip for us was to go to Pittsburgh, which was highly polluted at that time. Oh, boy, look at this. Holy shit. Look at the skies of Pittsburgh. Look at the filth here. Boy, they got some good stinky air. I've never seen so much filth. It's wonderful. Look at the sky stink. Ma, the clouds are all black.

Now you breathe it in nice and deep, guys. I love the big city. Breathe in the fresh air. So I didn't put this in here, but one woman said that her mom would wash their curtains every week because they would get so filthy. I think there's a middle ground there. I think there's a little from column A, a little from column B. Probably dirty curtains once a week washing a little much. And of course, their clothes were complete. You would walk home from work and you would be like, you know, sooty. And then eventually, businesses were spending so much money cleaning windows that it became a legitimate cost. The homes were covered in a gray dust, but not everyone took it laying down. Abby Salipino started the society. Salipino? She hated naps. Him, he hated naps. He hated siastas. He started the Society for Better Living in 1936, which promoted fresh and green grass, fresh air and green grass.

I think we should have, hold on. We've gathered here today because we are like our grass green. Yes. That's it. All right, Dale. But those are, I mean, those are just the no brainer things that we've just completely lost touch of. Yeah. So much of the grass nearby Danora was just dead. The Society would often take American steel and wire to court, sometimes winning, usually losing or running out of money. They're actually one of the very, very first environmental organizations. Okay. The same year, the documentary came out and produced one that I played. Smog was terrible in St. Louis.

Okay. Well, even without their law that they tried to pass earlier, city leaders had tried to do something about it. They tried to educate people to build cleaner fires. Everyone was using what was called soft coal, which was a dirty, cheap, high sulfur coal. Oh, God. And no one cared. It was cheap, right? Yeah. Now they get it. It was realized they could use a cleaner fuel like gas or oil or anthracite, but those were too expensive. In 1936, after debating it for years, the council required homes and businesses to install mechanical smokers in furnaces.

What's that? Not everyone did it. It's just a way to cut down on emissions. That's how they do the emissions here on cars. Like, it's just the biggest joke. Yeah, it's not. Like, you could have a car that should not pass and they're just like, yeah, you passed. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah.

50 bucks you passed. You're fine. Just go like, get out of here. Just get out of here. There's some of these cars that are here. You're like, what is going on? How is that? That was a Pontiac that's on fire on Sunset right now. What is going on?

The city created a division of smoke regulation in 1937. Mayor Bernard Dickman, Bernie Dickman named a smoke commissioner. Bernie Dickman hates fire. Bernie Dickman is tired of smoke. He's tired of burning. The smoke commissioner was their own dedicated. The mayor's smog man tried to get out the message through the newspaper. Did you say the mayor's smog man?

Smog man. I call them a smog man. Okay. I like it. I love it. Where's my smog man? I'm right here, chief. I can't see you. Of course you can't. That's part of the guy. See?

But it soon became obvious. The only thing to do was to wash and size soft coal. So wash it down so it's not as dirty. Okay. Get yourself a cloth. Washing coal. Put it in the bath, I guess. This coal's really clean and still filthy. So that made soft coal burn hotter and cleaner.

But the east side business interests were not down with this. The rag industry must have been booming at that time. Oh, fucking huge. So the east side business interests were not down with this and they threatened to boycott St. Louis products. Okay. If you make us use clean coal, we will stop buying stuff. Please.

That is straight from the top of the asshole corporation. Asshole ink. Then came Tuesday, November 28th or as it became known in St. Louis, Black Tuesday. Oh boy. There was a temperature inversion over the city which trapped the smog. The sun could not be seen. The city was just enveloped in a thick black smoke. Oh gosh.

No one had ever seen anything this bad. The street lights were turned on so people could get back and forth from work. A newspaper reported a streetcar passenger asked a conductor to let him off at 13th in Washington, quote, if you can find it. Oh gosh. Around here will do. Honey. Honey.

Hello. I hear you. Honey, I'm looking. Hello. Keep talking, hon. I'm over in the dark cloud. Well, everything's a dark cloud. Hon.

Help me. Wait, what? I'm getting further away. Honey, where is everything? Have you seen Silent Hill? Not now. Let's find each other. Then we'll do small talk.

The smog hung around for nine days and it caused the council to finally take action. The resistors no longer fought back. Yeah. New cleaner supplies of coal were purchased. A new smoke ordinance was passed and the public was educated and from then on the city's air improved. But other cities in America still hung on with their polluting ways. Back to Denora, Pennsylvania, which would become the poster boy of air pollution.

By 1948, it had 14,000 people living in the city and thousands of others living nearby and commuting. And it had shitloads of air pollution. But that was the trade off for having a great job. Sure. Yeah. Then came Wednesday, October 27th, 1948. Great Wednesday.

Yep. The best Wednesday ever is what they call it. Yeah. A massive inversion of cold air settled over the valley. Hot fumes were trapped in a sandwich layer with cold air on the bottom. Sandwich layer is probably not a good thing to hear. It's yummy. It's true.

So there's cold air on the top, there's fumes in the middle and then there's another cold layer of air on the bottom which trapped the air. Normally there's the hot air and then a cold layer above it, so it can just go out. The hot air, right. But if it's cold, hot, cold, then the air gets trapped down at the very bottom. So the air coming out of the chimneys has nowhere to go. Oh, so the air won't go, so that pollution won't go through the cold. Correct.

It's like there's a bubble above the town. You've closed the windows. You've closed the windows in the town. Right. So usually there's, right, usually the hot air smoke, smog dissipates usually. So a big, thick, yellowish smog descended on the city. It was nothing like anyone in Denora had ever seen before and it wasn't going anywhere. Two days later, it remained and it made living hard.

Jim Gleros, a fireman at the time, said, quote, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. What? A night at 12 noon on Main Street, like it was midnight. That's not healthy. No, I'm sure it's fine. I don't think that's good. This is how I work out.

But you couldn't get, I mean, they can't go anywhere, right? No, everyone was staying inside. Right. Oh my God. Although I go to the YMCA and there's a smog room workout now. Well, that place is great. They have a spinning class. Have you done fire pilates?

I've done fire pilates. They light the room on fire and you stretch. I've done that. You just, you burn, you just, it's a new you when you walk out. Oh my God. When you walk out of there, you feel so good when you finally get out. Have you tried lava yoga? I have tried lava yoga.

That is just too much. It's a little bit too much for me. A little much. A little much. Yeah. Have you tried sluice weightlifting? Sluice weightlifting? That's where you're in just a gross, it's like a mixture of just toxin and coal residues.

It's just like a ball. Where's that ball? It's like a pond. Is that a ball? It's a ball. I think that makes sense that it would be there. Joe Campo, a restaurant owner said, it was so bad that I had accidentally stepped off the curb and turned my ankle because I couldn't see my feet.

Well, I mean, he was fat. I get it. Okay. Yeah. Honestly. I mean, that is, it's not a huge fall. I mean, he's, he's. Ow.

Ow. The town was very proud of its high school football team, which had recently been ranked as the second best in the country. Well, it's going to be hard to do anything but run the ball and the championship. At the game that week, however, it was not great for spectators. They were playing their rivals and the field was almost invisible. The teams did not pass the ball because the players could not see it in the air. It's just two teams running at each other.

Yeah. Boy, this is a really horrible game. No one can see anything. The referee can't see anything. Yeah. How do they know if they call it? Calling it right. I guess touchdown.

Was it a touchdown? Be honest. We're on the 20-yard line. Wait, no. We can't prove it. We're in the parking lot. Oh, fuck me. Shit.

I'm not even a quarterback. Has anyone seen my son? People attended the Halloween parade, but for no reason. What a great costume I imagine. You couldn't see it. Quote, just shadows moving through the gloom, which now think about it. Very Halloweeny. That's a great Halloween.

Very Halloweeny. That's the best Halloween. Very Halloweeny. Are we all dying? Are we dead? Yeah. Has anyone seen my son? Charles Stacey quote, the smog created a burning sensation in your throat and eyes and nose.

Oh, good. But we still thought that was just normal for Denora. Yep. Well, there you go. It's Denormal. As the days were on, the effects became worse and more disturbing. One woman went to bed at night, and when she woke up the next morning, all of her plants were dead.

Oh, geez. Flowers, cactuses, everything. Cactuses? Yeah. That's not good. No. When you're killing a cactus. Cactus.

Then on Friday, things really kicked in. Quote, on Friday morning, we were walking to school. We could barely see the street lights, and they were on. And we could hardly see the traffic signals along McCain Avenue. We didn't understand that there was a tragedy unfolding. Oh, gosh. Oh, I don't know. Eileen Loftus was a nurse at the American Steel and Wire Company.

Around 4 p.m., a worker staggered in gasping for air. She had him lie down and gave him oxygen. Then another worker came in in the same condition, and then another, and another. A couple hours later, every bed and examine table had a wheezing, panicked worker on it. Good. A reporter in Pittsburgh phoned in a police report to his paper that people in Denora were flocking to hospitals. The rewrite man at the paper shrugged it off and said, quote, people are always coughing

in Denora. Good. Cool guy. I mean, that's what they do. That's what we call them. The coughing. That's the high school football team. The coughing Donoras.

The Denora cough. The Denora loogies. But that's pretty weird stance if you run a paper to be like, oh, come on, that's not news. Hey, they're dying down there in that town. They're always dying in that town. But you could literally do that about everything. Yeah.

You could be like, oh, come on, that happened before. What have you got new? What have you got new? They're always getting shot in Chicago. They're always getting shot in Chicago. People getting shot. What else you got? How about any horse on human crime?

Later on that day, the paper would be writing different stories about the town. The first person died on Friday. Oh, boy. Tons of people started calling. That makes me think more people are going to die. Why? Because that person is called the first person. No, that was his name.

Tons of people started calling the fire station because they couldn't breathe. The firemen began to bring oxygen to people so they could survive. Fireman Bill Schimp was the department's oxygen specialist. Good. He grabbed three addresses and lugged the heavy tanks up the street. They couldn't drive because they couldn't see. Oh, my God. So they carried 18 inch tanks with inhalation masks and hoses trying to blindly make their

way up the streets. Bill quote. I knew that street, like the back of my hand, but it took me an hour. But I couldn't see my hand. I knew that street, like the back of my hand, but it took me an hour to cover what I would normally do in 10 minutes. Oh, that's got to be horrible, too. They couldn't see anything.

Dragging those around, like for being lost. Can't, like you're basically in pitch black. Yeah. This has got to be horrible for your eyes. At the first house, he found a middle-aged, asthmatic worker and gave him three rounds of oxygen, but then he had to move to the next address. As he did, the family screamed at him that the patient would die. And they weren't wrong.

Hundreds fell seriously ill. Hospitals were overwhelmed. The top floor of the Donora Hotel was turned into a hospital to handle the overflow. Oh, gosh. By Saturday, the three funeral homes in town were full of bodies. This wasn't a town that had a lot of death. Usually 30 people died a year, so rash of death was not something they were prepared for. The town had eight doctors who dashed from house to house trying to save people as they

fell ill. But there were so many sick, they could only spend a few minutes in each house. And people were so panicked, and the doctors so stretched thin that the people would call more than one doctor at once. So often doctors were visiting people who had just seen a doctor. Oh, gosh. Just total mayhem. Meanwhile, pharmacists quote dispensed medications by the handful.

Good. People just wanted to get the phlegm out. Well, I just want to get the phlegm out. Okay. Here, take all these. Oh, gosh. Can I get the phlegm out, please? Yeah, yeah.

Here, take these. Oh, my God. Get out. Honestly, get out of here. Get out. I swear. Sir? Have you seen my son?

Sir? The fire department ran through their supply of 80 cubic feet of oxygen. Assistant Russell Davis went to nearby towns and took what they had. Quote, I didn't take any myself. What I did every time was I came back to the station and had a little shot of whiskey. I like his tactic. I don't hate his tactic. Oh, my God.

You guys, this is fucking party. I am blind drunk. Like, I cannot see shit. I mean, you're really complicating your vision when you're getting drunk in the black. I feel like this was not the best. Everyone's already on a blackout. Yeah, it's not great. I mean, imagine catching him.

Drinking? Yeah. You know, it seemed like a good idea. You're drunk. Yes. Hi. That's not going to hurt. Black people are like, eh, oxygen.

Yeah. I was like, can I have whiskey? Like, I feel so good. You know what I mean? I feel super warm. What? What are you talking about? I don't know.

I feel loose. You might be dying. Have you been outside for a while? Yes. That's not good. Fucking great. It's so weird. Yeah.

It's like a haunted house. There are dead people and people are screaming and it's just black. It's the best haunted house ever. Okay. Hey, you're my boss. This is the best Halloween we've ever had. It's not Halloween. By far.

Okay. By far. All right. Did you see the parade? I'm walking away. I gotta find my kid. I'm also looking for my son. The building where the Girl Scouts would have their meetings became a temporary morgue.

But the Zinc Works and the Steel Mill refused to shut down. What? How? Continuing to spew out toxic clouds into the suffocating atmosphere. They were asked by the town leaders to turn it off, but they wouldn't. And the deaths continued. How is that possible? Seriously.

I don't think there was any system set up that could shut down a factory. But people surely were irate at that happening? I would imagine, but I think there's also a part of their brain that doesn't want to believe that the place they work at is what's killing them. Well, that's a good policy. The sick became too numerous to count. The National Press got a hold. We can't see them, either.

Yeah. I think I counted them already. No, that's a dog. Oh, god damn it. The National Press blamed the deaths on pollution from the Zinc Works. And on Sunday, October 31st, at 6 a.m., the Zinc Works gave into public pressure on orders from the parent company, US Steel, and shut down the Zinc Works. Proud of them.

The superintendent said he was sympathetic about the dead and ill, but the factory was not responsible. After all, it had been working safely since 1915. So there's no way this is us. All right. If any of you are thinking some crazy thoughts like that, you could just screw right off. Clearly, it's the air. Did you guys see the dome on CBS?

Have you guys seen the dome? This is what this is. All right. There'll be no questions. They actually didn't completely shut down, though. Oh. They put it into what is known as a dead heat, which was to get it down to the lowest temperature they could without putting any ore in it.

So it was still warm, but without giving it more ore, they weren't creating pollution. But that's not what saved the town. Okay. So the town does survive. Later that day, a low pressure system and cold front moved in from the west. Oh, God. The one thing that we won't have. Oh, no.

It brought with it strong winds that finally allowed the atmosphere to start clearing. Then the rain came and what was left of the deadly smog was washed away. 20 people had died. That's crazy. The plants then fired up again the next day. Researchers have blamed the deaths. I wish the plants would die instead of the plants. I hear you, bro.

Do you know what I mean? I hear you. Sometimes I wish that these plants would live and that those plants over there would wilt and die. Yeah, man. Yeah. I hate you. You see my son? I hate your guts.

I've never... Where are you? I've never hated anybody more. Hey, man. You want to know what? It's going to be another plants thing. So if you don't want to hear it, you may as well get out of here. I don't want to hear it.

And get out of here. I'm leaving. Okay. Researchers have blamed the deaths on the zinc works which killed almost all plants and vegetation in a half mile radius. Good. That's always a good sign when there's a factory and then just death. Good. Good.

Other plants that were more... No problem there. Other plants that were more susceptible to the toxin, which was fluorine, spewed by the plant, died further out. Corn was one. All the corn in the valley was dead. Fluorine from the zinc plant was the culprit. Some victims had 20 times the normal level. Over the next week, the town buried their dead.

The death rate in Dinora was usually 30 deaths a year, but 20 died in a single weekend. So they're going to break the record. Now, yeah, right? Number one. That's cool. We're fucking number one. That's cool. Now, Dinora and the potential effects of air pollution were big news.

Newspapers called from all over the country. State and federal investigators arrived and interviewed every third household. Oh, boy. Probably not good things to say. Air monitoring sites were set up. Meteorological and biological research teams came. U.S. Steel refused to accept any responsibility, saying it was an act of God. Yeah.

Of course. Why would they? Makes total sense. It was an act of God. God made them burn coal. We've been in this since 1915 doing this. How could it be us? It's God.

It's clearly God. God. God put a big door or something on top of the town. God. Then in 1949, the U.S. Public Health Service issued a 173 page report. 5,910 people had become ill from the five day smog. Wow. That's like almost half the town.

That's crazy. But the report would not name what exactly was responsible. Sure. Well, it's hard to tell. The blame fell on the freakish weather pattern. Sorry. The thing that saved them there saying is the reason that they're sick. No.

The thing that the first inversion layer. Oh, the cold layer? Yeah. The cold hot layer is what killed them. Not the thing that was, like if you're stuck in a room and you set a fire, a smoky fire situation off, the reason you're dying is the door. Yeah. It's like the old saying, cold doesn't kill people.

A cold layer kills people. That's exactly right. Yeah. No one was really happy with the report. Why? It just explained permissible emission levels in the plant for healthy workers, but said nothing about older people in the community. So the report did not talk about what killed, it just said, these are levels that are fine,

but that was just in the plant. Now moving forward. And from now, so no old people in your town. Alrighty. Everyone who died had been over 52 years old and either had a heart or breathing issues beforehand. The local newspaper was furious the zinc plant got off scot-free in the report, quote, just a pair of reasonably good eyes could identify the culprit.

Not everyone was part of the statistics. Dr. Debra Davis' grandmother had her first heart attack during the smog disaster. But she survived, so she wasn't a fatality according to the official records. But she was someone who died seven years later, after 25 heart attacks. Well, let's just say that that's a high number for seven years. Let's start there. And the first one happened during the smog, right? So let's see.

So that's, I mean, that's, I mean, you're averaging more than three heart attacks a year. Yeah, you're banging them out. So you're really. Yeah. I think it was hard to catch a break. I think she was on the local heart attack team. Well, she was putting up great numbers.

Great numbers. I mean, she, she, I mean, at some point, I mean, that just has to get so routine at some point. Honey, I'm having another heart attack. All right, I'm going to go get some pineapple. Okay. Bye. Another 50 residents died of respiratory causes within a month after the incident.

Notable among those deaths was Lucas Musial, the father of future Hall of Famer Stan Musial. So all those people were not put in the fatality statistics from the, so it's actually more like 70 people that died. It just is, Dave, it just some, there's something reminiscent. In 1950, President Truman convened the First National Air Pollution Conference. It just offered rather lame recommendations. The government really didn't do much until 1970 when Nixon signed a Clean Air Act that actually placed strict regulation on factories.

So it took 20 years. Because he was full of so much hot air, we could have probably polluted as much as we needed to. Wow. Ow. It wasn't talked about in the town for years. So the people in the town just act like. Sure.

If you would bring it up, people would say, quote, let it die, let it die. They would be like, don't talk, don't talk, don't talk, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, all right, all right, all right. Yeah, yeah, we, we, everybody died. But I'm just saying everyone we know is now gone. Yeah. Okay. Let it die down.

It's like, okay, that's good. That's good. Thank you. We'll move on to another thing. Let's talk about something else. What's up with the team? How's this team doing this year? They're fine.

Remember when they couldn't see the ball in the game? No, that's not a thing we're discussing. Same. Somebody should be worried about this stuff. There's our town, we love our town, but our town was covered. Why can't we say that? Why can't I say that our town was heavily polluted taking them out back and kill them? Excuse me.

I tried. I tried you guys. I tried. No. Hey, thank you boys. Everyone in the town was employed by the mills. So or, you know, or secondary based on the mill workers, right? So they had a restaurant, but it's still based on the mill.

So they couldn't, they couldn't possibly accept that their livelihood is the thing that was, they could kill them at any time. It's like we're comedians, but at any time comedy could murder us. Yeah. That's basically how they're. Well, and also, I mean, it's the same thing today. Like obviously where it's like, you know, we, we just won't sit like we know shit's bad.

Like we know that Cole is bad, but we still can't, we still won't get off it because people are here. You keep going. I don't know what you're talking about. We'll, we'll drop. We'll connect the dots later. The zinc plant closed in 1957. Denora was another first.

It started the decline of the industrial revolution in America. The Denora steel mill became the first major steel mill in the United States to close. The town slowly died. The last public school felt like that was happening already though. Yeah. The last public school was closed just a few years ago. The last Roman Catholic church was closed recently. The town bridge is closed and the Denora historical society is being sued for damages cause when

its headquarters collapsed during a heavy snow. Wait, what? I mean, what is they in trouble for? The historical society is being sued for damages cause when its headquarters collapsed during a heavy snow. They're being sued. I know this is a minor detail, but they're being sued because they're building collapse because of snow.

I couldn't figure who was suing them. Who? Santa? I mean, like. No, that's gotta be the heatmizer. Who? It's not great. I mean, insult to injury.

I'm still just getting over the collapse of the historical museum. Well, yeah, we're gonna bring a lawsuit against you too. That was very upsetting. How's your town? The historical museum is collapsed. Some people in the town still blame the air quality movement for killing Denora. Some? Yeah.

They're still there. They're like, well, if they didn't want clean air, we'd be fine. Oh, that part. I keep thinking when you say kill, you mean humans. No. You mean industry. The town. I mean, there's like 5,000 people left in the town.

But in truth, Denora was the thing that actually began change in a move toward clean air. There's now a Denora smog museum in the town. Please just tell me. It's got nothing on the walls and it's just smog. And it's the names of people. It has pictures. It has some other stuff. There's a plaque that reads, in the town, clean air started here.

Yeah. Well, not for the right reasons. No. So if we're drawing comparisons to... Do we even need to draw compare? This is the same thing. It's not because it means that we're going to have to have something horrific happen before we...

Right. But we're right. But the parallel is drawn to before the everyone's dying. We're there. We're at that point in our story. We don't know what happens in other countries. In China, they've been having massive deaths from smog, absolutely. Yeah.

China's doors. In April, we had a bunch of deaths in Los Angeles from bad air. Was that due to the... What was that fucking gas leak? The methane leak? No. It wasn't the methane leak. Which is another terrible one.

But right. It was an inversion thing and we had air trapped and a bunch of people went to hospitals and there was a bunch of respiratory issues. So I don't know if people react to it differently in America because this reminds me of the car episode where people just kept dying and not wanting to change. Right. So I don't know if that's an American thing or if it's a world thing where you just stay in it until it's so fucking obvious that something is horrible.

Isn't that what it is though? I think that that... I think that that... I don't know if that is a...I think that is a stronger American mentality than most places. I think we're the... I wonder. I think that for sure. I really do.

I think when you go to other countries, it's just...it's little stuff. But you can just tell that the infrastructure, that the city gives more of a shit about the people. Yeah. It's kind of palpable and it's just kind of evident, right? But here, I think we need to be fucking slapped across the face repeatedly before we wake up. We respond to tragedy or catastrophe.

So we do. I mean, truly, if we wanted to solve our problems, what we would...what we should do is we should just set up a convincing UFO, have them land on Earth, and tell us to clean up our act. That's not a bad idea. That would get...that's the sort of tactic that would make us go, oh shit, oh, we gotta do...you know, we gotta do something about this. That's just like how 9-11 changed our forum policy. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. I could go on and on. Because the cold thing is still a thing. I mean, that is like... It is still a thing. When you talk about Trump versus Hillary, there...you know, a big point of contention there is, you

know, the people don't want to sacrifice jobs and a local economy, which is again understandable for, you know, for clean energy because it's a switch. And some people have been doing this for so long. Yeah. But you have to. Yeah, you don't have to switch. There's no...yeah, there's no unemployment without Earth. Oh, that's...I mean, employment without Earth.

There's plenty of unemployment without Earth. There's not... Either. There's nothing. There's nothing. There's no...all the minutiae never...it stops mattering the second that you have no oxygen or water. You're so in oxygen.

Look, I've been up oxygen's ass for ages. I love oxygen. I invested in oxygen in the 80s. My name is Garrett. I love the Earth. Okay. For the record, anyone is listening? That was Dave doing an impression of me?

That was not me. I do not talk like that and I would not... I like birds and air. My name's Garrett. Okay. Well... That's you. No, that you...

I'm Garrett. They're like water and air and plants. Uh-huh. Well, again, that's... Because I'm a stupid. All right. I'm a stupid? That's really unfair.

And not me. For the record, not me. Signed a car this weekend. We signed cars. Yeah, we signed cars.