The mill town of Donora , where a smoky , lethal fog killed 19 people . Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images
Despite residents ’ concern about the smoke burping out of the factories and into the valley , many couldn ’ t afford to be too worried — the vast majority of those 14,000 residents were employed by the very same mills . So when the deadly smog incident occurred , mill bosses and employees scrambled to find another culprit for the accident ( though the Zinc Works was shut down for a week as a concession ).
“ The first investigators were run out of town by people with handguns ,” says Devra Davis , the founder of Environmental Health Trust and the author of When Smoke Ran Like Water . “ The majority of the town council worked in the mill , and some of them had executive jobs , like supervisors . Any suggestion that there could be some problem with the mill itself , which was supporting them financially , was simply something that there was no economic incentive to even entertain .”
Whatever their affiliation , everyone from the town leaders to factory owners agreed that they needed answers and a way to prevent such a catastrophe from ever occurring again . In the weeks after the fog , Donora ’ s Borough Council , the United Steelworkers , American Steel & Wire and even the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania called upon the federal government to launch an investigation led by the nascent United States Public Health Service .