Week of Death – Day 3

The London Fog aka the Great Smog of 1952

No not that London Fog . It was on this day in 1952 that Londoners woke to find a cold, heavy fog had settled over the city. Like most people would, the people cranked up the heat in their homes to take the chill out of the air. Not that anything could have been done about it, but the simple act of heating their homes was to prove fatal to some 12,000 people.

"Majority of the locals used wood as fuel. However, with the city’s growth, forests were unable to meet the demands for wood. Sea-coal deposits made for a better and a cheaper alternative. Though it was abundant, it doesn’t burn efficiently. It was producing more smoke than heat.” (link)

The colder it got, the more coal was burned for heat. The combination of coal produced smoke, dense continuous fog, and a low fall sun (the sun would normally help the fog lift) formed together created a terrible black smog ( link). Visibility was near zero; birds flew into buildings, mass transit was stopped, people couldn’t even see their own feet when outside.

Some 4000 people would die in the 5 days that the fog hung over London. Reports have it that public health officials didn’t realize there was a problem until the supply of coffins in the city couldn’t meet the public demand. In the weeks after the fog another 8000 people would die to bronchial infections and pneumonia. Most significantly for Mitchieville readers is that out of this disaster the modern environmental moment was formed. A rather inconvenient truth, eh?

Week of Death total: 32,000 and counting.

Tomorrow: A tragedy Canada may never forget.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 , Day 5, Day 6, Day 7