Parachutists, giraffes and freightliners are among those that tangled with Mother Nature 鈥� and lost 鈥� in the new book 鈥溾�� by journalist and author Neil Zurcher. The idea for the book originated in the 1970s, while he was riding an elephant to Richfield Coliseum as part of a promotion for Ringling Bros. Circus.
鈥淚've got this rather old gnarly keeper of the elephants walking beside me,鈥� he said. 鈥淪uddenly, he looked up and says, 'You know about the story about the great circus fire?' And I went, 'What circus fire?'鈥�
The seed was planted, but it took until Zurcher retired in 2017 after six decades of covering stories in Northeast Ohio. The circus fire is the first chapter in the book.
'A friendly face...' for elephants
Zurcher follows each disaster with not only the details of what happened, but the heroes who emerged in the face of tragedy. One of them was Chester Koch, who in 1942 was the City of Cleveland鈥檚 coordinator of patriotic activities. He happened to be standing outside City Hall on August 4 of that year, just after a fire broke out in one of Ringling Brothers鈥� animal tents.
鈥淗e suddenly saw this herd of elephants running wild from the circus grounds heading down Lakeside Ave.,鈥� said Zurcher. 鈥淗e ran into the street, pulled out a whistle鈥� and yelled, 鈥楽top!鈥� And the elephants stopped. Everybody was saying, 鈥榃hy did they stop for him?鈥� And they said, 鈥楾hey were just looking for a friendly face.鈥欌��
Writing the book was also a learning experience for Zurcher. He made a request to go to Cincinnati on December 3, 1979, to cover the aftermath of a concert by the Who where 11 people were trampled to death. His editor nixed the idea, but he鈥檇 always stayed curious about what happened.
鈥淚 had an experience several years earlier, while trying to cover the Beatles where I got trapped in a mob scene, where I literally feared for my life and thought we were going to get trampled to death,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o, I knew what it felt like鈥� to be caught in a situation like that. And that was one of the reasons I picked that story [for the book]: I wanted to learn more about what happened. I was curious whether the Who had ever come back to Cincinnati to play again.鈥�
And in fact, they didn鈥檛 until earlier this year. For decades, Cincinnati banned festival seating to prevent a similar disaster from occurring.
A safer world?
Legislation was also enacted after the Fitchville nursing home fire, which killed dozens of people in 1963. In those cases 鈥� and several others in the book 鈥� moder