East Ohio Gas Explosion Photographs   Save
Dominion East Ohio Gas (Company) Records
Description: Four 8" by 10" (2.032 by 25.4 cm) photographs document the October 1944 explosion and fire that devastated a Cleveland neighborhood. In 1941 the East Ohio Gas Company built a plant in Cleveland for performing the process of liquefaction and regasification. Three tanks were built to hold 60-million cubic feet of gas each. A fourth tank was added in 1943 that held 120 million cubic feet. When gas escaped from the fourth tank it ignited into a ball of flame that swept a mile-wide area and claimed 129 lives. In the aftermath of the explosion and fire, the company paid $7,000,000 in compensation to injured workers or families of workers killed in the disaster. It also created a scholarship fund for children of employees who perished. The East Ohio Gas Company was incorporated in 1898 as a marketing company for the National Transit Company, the natural gas arm of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The company launched its business by selling to consumers in no View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: Om1634_2749839_005
Subjects: Business and Labor; Geography and Natural Resources; Gas industry; Explosions; Disasters
Places: Cleveland (Ohio); Cuyahoga County (Ohio)