--- title: "Garrett Morgan wore his own safety hood into a gas-filled tunnel under Lake Erie in 1916 to rescue workers" url: https://badiyaa.com/garrett-morgan-safety-hood-lake-erie-tunnel/ published: 2026-11-12T21:15:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-12T21:15:00+00:00 section: History publisher: Badiyaa --- # Garrett Morgan wore his own safety hood into a gas-filled tunnel under Lake Erie in 1916 to rescue workers Garrett Morgan, the Black Cleveland inventor, used his own safety hood in 1916 to enter a gas-filled tunnel under Lake Erie and carry out survivors. In the middle of the night on 24 July 1916, Cleveland inventor Garrett Morgan was woken and asked to bring his breathing hoods to the lakefront. A gas explosion had ripped through a water intake tunnel being dug under Lake Erie, and the men sent in to help were not coming back out. Morgan arrived with his brother Frank, both reportedly still in pajamas, carrying four of his hoods. Wearing them, the brothers and two volunteers walked into the gas-filled tunnel and came back carrying survivors. ## The disaster under the lake Cleveland had been pushing tunnels miles out under Lake Erie since the 1890s to reach clean water beyond its polluted shoreline. The work was deadly. According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case Western Reserve University, six tunnel disasters between 1898 and 1916 killed 58 men. The last came when diggers in a 10-foot-wide tunnel struck a pocket of natural gas and a spark set it off. Eleven workers died, and so did 10 would-be rescuers who were overcome by gas after going in to help. Two rescue attempts had already failed by the time someone who had watched one of Morgan’s demonstrations sent a messenger to fetch him. The encyclopedia credits Morgan’s team with saving two men and recovering four bodies before officials from the U.S. Bureau of Mines halted the effort. Morgan himself went into the tunnel four times and felt the effects of the fumes on his health for years. ## How the safety hood worked Morgan, the son of formerly enslaved parents from Kentucky, had a sixth-grade education and built his career repairing sewing machines before turning to his own inventions. He designed the hood after watching firefighters struggle in thick smoke, filed for a patent in 1912 and founded the National Safety Device Company in 1914. The design relied on a simple bit of physics. Hot smoke rises, leaving a layer of cleaner air near the floor. Morgan’s hood drew air through tubes that hung down close to the ground, and a wet sponge helped filter and cool it. Later versions added an air bag holding about 15 minutes of fresh air. To sell it, Morgan sometimes hid his identity. Disguised as “Big Chief Mason,” he would walk into a tent filled with smoke from burning tar, sulfur, formaldehyde and manure, stay for 20 minutes and walk out unharmed. Some sales were made through a white actor who posed as the inventor. ## A hero left off the list Cleveland’s newspapers and officials largely ignored Morgan’s role at first. When the city asked the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission to give medals to men involved in the rescue, Morgan was not on the list, and he believed race was the reason. Once photos of him circulated nationally, several Southern cities canceled orders for the hood. In 1917, a group of Cleveland citizens gave him a diamond-studded gold medal of their own. Morgan later wrote in his diary: “I had but a little schooling, but I am a graduate from the school of hard knocks and cruel treatment. I have personally saved nine lives.” ## From smoke hood to traffic signal Morgan’s other famous invention came seven years after the tunnel rescue. Badiyaa has already looked at [Garrett Morgan’s 1923 traffic signal patent and its all-way stop](https://badiyaa.com/garrett-morgan-traffic-light-patent-1923/), which he later sold to General Electric for $40,000. Put the two inventions side by side and the thread is the same: cheap, simple devices that kept ordinary people alive. Cleveland produced other Black trailblazers of that era, including [Dorothy Dandridge, the first Black woman nominated for the best actress Oscar](https://badiyaa.com/dorothy-dandridge-born-1922-first-black-best-actress-nominee/). Morgan died in 1963, aged 86. Today the city’s Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant, which processes water from the same lake he walked beneath, carries his name, and in 2023 the Cleveland Fire Department named its new fireboat after him. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Garrett Morgan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Morgan) - [Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: Waterworks Tunnel Disasters](https://case.edu/ech/articles/w/waterworks-tunnel-disasters) *Image: Jim Mathews (Historic American Engineering Record), Public domain via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*