Hawk's Nest incident - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster involved injuries and deaths as the result of the construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel near Gauley Bridge

Gauley Bridge, West Virginia

Gauley Bridge is a town in Fayette County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 738 at the 2000 census. The Kanawha River is formed at Gauley Bridge by the confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers...

, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

, as part of a hydroelectric project. This project is considered to be one of the worst industrial disasters in American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

history.

Tunnel

To generate electricity for a plant downstream at Alloy

Alloy, West Virginia

Alloy is an unincorporated community in Fayette County, West Virginia, United States. Alloy is located along the Kanawha River and U.S. Route 60 southwest of Gauley Bridge. Alloy was originally known as Boncar until the mid 1930's...

, Union Carbide

Union Carbide

Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. It currently employs more than 2,400 people. Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some are high-volume...

decided to divert the New River to improve its power generation ability. Beginning in 1927, its contractor Rinehart & Dennis began construction of the 3 miles (4.8 km) tunnel carrying the river under Gauley Mountain. A dam was constructed immediately below Hawks Nest

Hawks Nest State Park

Hawks Nest State Park is located on in Fayette County near Ansted, West Virginia. The park's clifftop overlook along U.S. Route 60 provides a scenic vista of the New River, some 750 feet below. The hydro-electric project tunnel that passes underneath nearby Gauley Mountain was the scene of the...

to divert most of the New River flow into the tunnel. It then re-enters the river near Gauley Bridge

Gauley Bridge, West Virginia

leaving a section known as "the Dries" in between.

Silica

During the construction of the tunnel, workers found the mineral silica and were asked to mine it for use in electroprocessing steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

. The workers were not given any masks or breathing equipment to use while mining, despite the fact that management wore such equipment during inspection visits. As a result of the exposure to silica dust, many workers developed silicosis

Silicosis

Silicosis, also known as Potter's rot, is a form of occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust, and is marked by inflammation and scarring in forms of nodular lesions in the upper lobes of the lungs...

, a debilitating lung disease. A large number of the workers eventually died from pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs. A condition meeting the word's definition is normally called...

, a follow-on disease of silicosis, in some cases as quickly as within a year.

There are no definitive statistics as to the death toll from the Hawks Nest disaster. According to a historical marker on site, there were 109 admitted deaths. A Congressional hearing placed the death toll at 476. Other sources range from 700 to over 1,000 deaths amongst the 3,000 workers. Many of the workers at the site were African-Americans from the southern United States who returned home or left the region after becoming sick, making it difficult to calculate an accurate total.

Cultural references

Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism...

wrote a poetry sequence, "The Book of the Dead", about this disaster, which can be found in her book, U.S. 1 (published in 1938).

Hubert Skidmore
Hubert Skidmore
Hubert Skidmore was an American author. His twin brother was novelist Hobert Skidmore, and he was married to the novelist Maritta Wolff, author of Whistle Stop and a fellow student at the University of Michigan, in 1942. He died in a house fire in 1946...

, a West Virginian, immortalized the tragic events from the common man's perspective in his book Hawk's Nest
Hawk's Nest (novel)
Hawk's Nest is a novel written by West Virginia author Hubert Skidmore, published in 1941. A fictionalized account of one of America's greatest industrial disasters, it is an account of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster in which hundreds or thousands of men were sickened and died as a result of...

which followed the fictional accounts of several tunnel workers and their families. Skidmore wrote the book only a few years after the incident (originally published in 1941) and likely used direct sources for his story development.

Hawks Nest is also mentioned in a section entitled Dying for a Living: The Hawk's Nest Incident in the book Trust Us, We're Experts
Trust Us, We're Experts
Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future is a book written by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber....

by Sheldon Rampton
Sheldon Rampton
Sheldon Rampton was the American editor of PR Watch, and is the author of several books that criticize the public relations industry and what he sees as other forms of corporate and government propaganda....

and John Stauber
John Stauber
John Stauber is an American writer and political activist who has co-authored five books about propaganda by governments, private interests and the PR industry...

.

In the young adult fiction novel The Miner's Daughter by Gretchen Moran Laskas, the main character's father and older brother go to work on the Hawks Nest Tunnel after their coal mine is shut down. The two men return less than a year later because the father is gravely ill with a cough.

Dwight Harshbarger, a native West Virginian, wrote the novel Witness at Hawks Nest. This historical fiction novel tells the tragic story of America's worst, yet least known, industrial disaster.

David Pushkin, a native West Virginian, is developing a documentary with the working title: Hawks Nest Tunnel: A Documentary. It's an investigative documentary that digs deeply into the largely untold story of government and big business. It uncovers the voices and faces of West Virginians who were impacted by our nation’s largest industrial tragedy. www.hawksnestmovie.org

Historical marker

A nearby West Virginia Historical Marker at Hawks Nest State Park

Hawks Nest State Park

reads:

"Construction of nearby tunnel, diverting waters of New River through Gauley Mt for hydroelectric power, resulted in state's worst industrial disaster. Silica rock dust caused 109 admitted deaths in mostly black, migrant underground work force of 3,000. Congressional hearing placed toll at 476 for 1930-35. Tragedy brought recognition of acute silicosis as occupational lung disease and compensation legislation to protect workers."

External links

About the Hawk's Nest Incident
Silicosis: From Public Menace to Litigation Target by Wade Goodwyn, National Public Radio

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Tunnel

Silica

Cultural references

Historical marker

See also

External links