What is in a name?
Posted by R.E. in Previous Posts, tags: Burning River, Burning River Roller GirlsHow has the Burning River Roller Girls name come to be? The phrase “Burning River” comes from the Cuyahoga River which had caught fire numerous times such as 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire burned for three days and caused over 1.5 million dollars in damage.. The 1969 fire is the most famous fire on the Cuyahoga River, for it was this fire that the “Burning River” gained its notoriety. The fire of June 22, 1969 made major news attenetion when Time Magazine ran an article headlined “The Price of Optimism”,
…Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows. “Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,” Cleveland’s citizens joke grimly. “He decays.” . . .
Time Magazine, August 1969
Flames climbed as high as five stories until fire boats brought it under control approximately 25 minutes later. This fire had also became the inspiration for a few songs, one of the first being Randy Newman’s “Burn On, Big River” which can be heard here.
“I will never forget a photograph of flames, fire, shooting right out of the water in downtown Cleveland,” President Clinton’s EPA administrator Carol Browner said years later. “It was the summer of 1969 and the Cuyahoga River was burning.”
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I remember when we were kids and our school (from Geauga County) took a trip on the Goodtime 2 boat out into Lake Erie and on the Cuyahoga River – the whole time we were thinking we’d be going up in flames! Our teachers were pointing out the oilslicks and I wondered if we would see that crying Native American from the 1970′s commercials because of all the pollution. Some of the kids got seasick, but not me. I think I like to drink Guiness because it looks like the water from the Cuyahoga back then!
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