Katelin Kershaw- Love Canal

I showed the movie clip to my family and roommates and recorded their reaction to the Love Canal situation.

Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today?

Comment 1: I was aware that these types of things happened. They’re kind of accidents though. Like oil spills, they ju11st happen. But it’s kind of weird to think that these things actually happen. To think that that many people had to leave their homes because of this environmental accident.

Comment 2: I was aware that nasty things like this happened. What surprises me is how ignorant and, quite frankly, stupid that chemical plant was to just dump all of their waste into the ground around a populated area. I did like how incredibly 90s this video was. The dramatic sound effects were especially nice.

Comment 3: I was aware that environmental tragedies like this still exist. Although it is frustrating that people would be stupid enough to build a school over a former dumping ground of chemical waste.

Comment 4: I don’t know… It’s amazing how a manmade structure that people are familiar with could be so dangerous to people. It’s not surprising that it took them awhile to figure out what was causing the problem because they wouldn’t expect something so commonplace to be the source.

Comment 5: I was aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist but I didn't realize it was happening in our very own USA. Also I think catastrophes like this could be avoided if people weren’t idiots

Comment 6: I am not aware that these environmental tragedies still exist today. The love canal was about thirty years ago.

Comment 7: Yes, it is really interesting to see how environmental tragedies can impact us today as well as all those years ago.

Comment 8:I was aware that there are occasionally some “incidents” that need to be cleaned up and contained, but was not aware that there were any of this magnitude in the United States. It would not surprise me if there were many of these types of situations in less regulated countries.

Comment 9: I had no idea that these kinds of things happened. I just assumed that everything was safe. But if we have problems like that here in North America, what kind of problems could there be in other areas?

Comment 10: This is something that I knew happened around the world, but I didn’t realize that there were tragedies this large. I will have to be more aware of the environment around me.

Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today?

I was well aware that we still have environmental tragedies today and that they can affect everyone. Whether it comes through irresponsibility or just being unaware of the situations around us we can expect that bad things are going to happen, we just need to be more watchful.

In your opinion are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis?

I think that we need to be concerned with the environment and try to be more aware of what we are doing to the earth. But I don’t think it something that needs to keep us up at night. I think as long as we are trying to keep the environment clean and free from tragedy then things will get better. It is when neglect takes place that problems occur with more frequency.

Why should we care about something that happened over 30 years ago?

Problems occur when we forget about the past and try to move on without the lessons we learned. There are many examples from history that if people had remembered, the problem would probably not have happened. It’s important to remember in case something similar happens so that we can figure out how to best fix the situation.