Cleveland Area Disasters

Images of America: Ohio

by Calvin Rydbom, Thomas Kubat

Images of America: Cleveland Area Disasters looks back at the historic disasters to strike Cleveland in the first half of the 20th century. It documents the tornados, fires, cave-ins, accidents, and explosions that befell the region during that period. Most Clevelanders have heard stories of the Colinwood school fire, the Lorain tornado, the Cleveland Clinic fire, and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey fire; however, over the decades, the true events and the tall tales that followed have become blurred. Some disasters, such as the West 117th Street explosion and the Waterworks Tunnel cave-ins, seem almost completely forgotten. Although tragic, the disasters in this book affected the lives of Clevelanders and often generated changes for the good, which prevented these sorts of tragedies from occurring again. Sadly, in some instances, they did not.

Genres: Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 22, 2013

Reviews

[Megan]

Interesting history, but some of the captions were overly melodramatic. Regardless, I enjoyed learning some new things about Cleveland.

[Linda]

Interesting which "disasters" made the cut, I wouldn't have included fires on the Cuyahoga River because of pollution as the authors did. I definitely would have included a violent thunderstorm/windstorm that hit the lakefront especially Lakewood in 1969.

But I digress, interesting take on events including a grade school fire, a gas storage tank explosion and a tornado in nearby Lorain County. The short book is packed with archival pictures and detailed captions along with diagrams of the places impacted by the tragedies including the underground tunnel being dug to help purify Lake Erie's water.

The narratives by the two authors are spare letting the pictures and number of people lost doing most of the talking. The language is very formal and almost a throwback to the era's depicted in this book.

[Amy]

A very interesting book. I learned a lot more about some of the events, such as the Collinwood School Fire, the Lornado (Lorain Tornado), etc. than I knew, before.

[Rebecca Renea]

Sometimes it's good to be reminded of what has happened in the past despite how sad it may be.
Awesome pictures that we would never see otherwise.