Episode 27: Collateral Damage: Industrial City, Industrial Accidents

As industry accelerated in Cleveland during the 1880s and 1890s, the pace of industrial accidents--all too often fatal--also picked up. The newspapers of the day gave brief but vivid accounts of workplace accidents. The ore docks seem to have been particularly dangerous, but fatal accidents took place in factories of all kinds. Larger industrial disasters also took place. Some of those disasters are little remembered today--such as a riverbed accident that claimed the lives of 16 ore dock workers in July 1896. One of the most dramatic industrial accidents in Cleveland history was the water tunnel explosion of 1916. 20 lives were lost as tunnel workers, firemen, policemen, doctors, tugboat crew members, the janitor on the crib, and African American inventor Garrett Morgan were all swept up in desperate rescue attempts.