Depression Laborers, Many Black, Killed By Silica Dust At Hawks Nest, WV Tunnel, Gauley Mt. 1930
Last edited Mon Sep 7, 2020, 03:39 PM - Edit history (1)
'Before Black Lung, The Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster Killed Hundreds,' NPR, Jan. 20, 2019.
- In the photo above, dust circles a worker during the construction of the Hawks Nest Tunnel in 1930. Workers on the project were exposed to toxic levels of silica dust; hundreds ultimately died. (Courtesy Elkem Metals Collection, WVa. State Archives).
Southern West Virginia is a playground for hikers, cyclists and rock climbers, but in the heart of that lush landscape rests the site of what many consider the worst industrial disaster in American history.
Today, from a picturesque overlook on the mountain above, tourists can see the gate of the Hawks Nest Tunnel, located on the New River in Gauley Bridge. There, water rushes through 16,240 feet of steel and rock.
But almost 90 years ago, thick clouds of dust blurred the eyes and choked the lungs of workers inside the tunnel. The project attracted thousands of men, hoping to find work during the Great Depression. Three-fourths were African-Americans fleeing the South.
"To these men, going to West Virginia was like going to heaven — a new land, a new promised land — and when they got here, they found that they had ended up in a hellhole," says Matthew Watts, a minister and amateur historian in Charleston, W.Va.
Hundreds of workers would die after working in the tunnel from exposure to toxic silica dust, a mineral that slices the lung like shards of glass.
As NPR has reported, that same deadly dust has caused a resurgence of severe black lung disease among coal miners in Appalachia. Miners today are sickened younger and entering advanced stages of the disease more quickly. What's more, federal regulators could have prevented it.
But before the modern epidemic plaguing coal miners, there was the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, a long-forgotten example of the occupational dangers of silica dust — and the government's response to death on its doorstep.
- "The town of the living dead": The Union Carbide and Carbon Corp. began constructing the 3-mile tunnel in the spring of 1930. The company wanted to divert water from the New River to a plant downstream to generate power for iron smelting.
Nearly 3,000 workers labored in shifts of 10 or 15 hours. The tunnel, projected to be completed in four years, wrapped in 18 months. Workers drilled holes and then stacked dynamite to blast through sandstone.
Gauley Mountain, where the tunnel was built, was 99% pure sandstone, a valuable commodity in 1930. Drilling through sandstone kicks up silica dust. One worker later said the dust was so thick, he could practically chew it.
"There was a nickname at the time for Gauley Bridge: the town of the living dead," says local writer Catherine Venable Moore, "because there were so many sick workers, and also because they had this kind of ghostly presence when they were coming out of the tunnel being covered in this white silica dust."
One of those workers was Dewey Flack, a 17- or 18-year-old African-American man. Flack's age is unclear because — like many other black tunnel workers — only a few traces of his life and death remain. Most likely, Watts says, Flack left his home in North Carolina with a one-way train ticket to West Virginia and the promise to send money to his parents and five younger siblings. He would never see them again.
- "Young, healthy people breaking down": Soon after construction began, men were already getting sick and dying at the tunnel. "Each and every day I worked in that tunnel, I helped carry off 10 to 14 men who was overcome by the dust," a Hawks Nest worker recalled in a 1936 newsreel. Photos taken during construction show ghostly images of workers shrouded in clouds of white dust.
According to Union Carbide documents, 80% of the workers became ill, died or walked off the job after six months. "The local doctors really were not quite clear at first what they were seeing...
Read More, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/20/685821214/before-black-lung-the-hawks-nest-tunnel-disaster-killed-hundreds
- A drilling crew poses for the above photo in 1931. To create the Hawks Nest Tunnel, workers had to drill through nearly pure sandstone, which kicks up toxic silica dust. Workers in the photo are not wearing respirators — a requirement later mandated by Congress after hundreds of men died from exposure to silica in the tunnel. (Courtesy Elkem Metals Collection, WV State Archives).
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slavery by another name because we know they were paid the minimum to die for the corporation in these hellholes. The South was also known to lease out African-American prisoners from local jails who were usually held on charges of vagrancy, a nebulous charge to be able to lease these 'prisoners' into projects such as these. The judges who convicted these 'prisoners' got a cut of that lease money, the sheriffs who picked them up for walking through their town and locals that came to the attention of these
lawmen got a cut.
Slavery by another name.
