Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster

Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster, WV: Worst Industrial Disaster in U.S. History

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Hawk’s (alternative, Hawks) Nest is the name of a mountain peak or promontory about 1,500 feet above sea level, which is near the end of a southern-trending spur of Gauley Mountain, whose own altitude is 2,539 feet above sea level. Gauley Mountain is about 1.6 miles northwest of the small town of Ansted (population 1,576) situated on Route 60 in Fayette County (population 47,579), West Virginia (population 1,812,035) (census estimates as of this writing). Hawk’s Nest once overlooked the New River descending its rocky gorge, but today it overlooks Hawks Nest Pool, which is actually a shallow manmade reservoir some 3.65 miles long.

Map of USA showing location of West Virginia. Source: http://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/states/west-virginia/maps/west-virginia-location-map.gif; accessed May 7, 2009.		Map of West Virginia showing location of Fayette County. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_West_Virginia_highlighting_Fayette_County.svg; accessed May 7, 2009.

Google map showing important points in the New and Kanawha River Valleys. By M.O’Leary.

In 1930, before there was a Hawk’s Nest Lake reservoir, a person standing at the summit of Hawk’s Nest who looked west and slightly south could easily see a “cluster of flimsy, temporary shacks scattered to either side of a small railway track which led, through scaffolding and loose-torn earth, toward a dark hole, like the open mouth of a mine, in the base of the mountain where the river turned its course.” (1) This hole in Gauley Mountain was the upper end (tunnel intake) of the infamous Hawk’s Nest Tunnel.

Modern view of Hawk’s Nest Tunnel intake to the left side of the dam. Fayette County, West Virginia. Source: http://wvnomad.homestead.com/wv3.html; accessed May 7, 2009.		View of dam (beyond is New River looking downstream) from Hawk’s Nest, Gauley Mountain, Fayette County, West Virginia. Source: http://wvnomad.homestead.com/files/hawksnest2.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

An observer in 1930 said, “That’s where the water’s going in. They’ll build a dam across the river there, and then the water will run in that hole. It comes out down near Gauley Bridge.” (1) The completed tunnel would be three miles long, with a descent of 162 feet, straight through Gauley Mountain. (2) The water coming out the other end of the tunnel would flow over four Westinghouse turbines and “the generated electric power would then be carried over six miles of cable, strung on twenty-three towers. Crossing and recrossing the river [called the Kanawha beyond the junction of the New and Gauley Rivers] and surmounting other natural obstacles, it would reach the plant at Boncar.” (2) Boncar (subsequently renamed Alloy) was a village where Union Carbide Corporation planned to build a new metallurgical complex to manufacture ferro-silicate alloys that required far greater power than was available before 1930.

A black miner walking out of Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, West Virginia, 1930. Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2ghYGGafr_WAKwJFfIMZQnPD_co28GjS32NqsQ6pL03Sbe8fCRtlJXYETe7_0acBvcKyCsQyWlm-9FFvGzNYHyVQYQZJ9NjETLCtM94FchIwxsdbiOAMoLQtQEVKO_w1lIBucdZfJMTfC/s320/hawks+nest+tunnel.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.		Hawk’s Nest Tunnel workers, West Virginia, 1930-1931. Source: http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/03YyebsatQ4ja/340x.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

The problem with building the tunnel was that hundreds of men, possibly 764 or more (of a total 5,000 on the work force), died of an acute rapidly progressive form of silicosis during the breakneck construction. (3-4) Most of the deceased workers were African-American migrants who worked underground. “What worsened the health conditions inside the tunnel was the use of dry drill bits and inadequate ventilation systems in violation of standard practice. The practice of wetting drill bits controlled airborne dust to some degree, but wet drill bits also made for slower drilling, impeding the progress of the tunnel, and thereby cut into contractor profits. (5) Drilling began in March 1930 and was completed in December 1931, three months ahead of schedule. (6) The epidemic of silicosis that slew hundreds of men during the building of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel qualifies as the worst industrial disaster in American history, says Cherniack.

1. Origin of Union Carbide Corporation, Creator of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel

Union Carbide Corporation traces its roots to 1886 when investors formed the National Carbon Company to commercialize 1) the electric arc for streetlights and 2) carbon electrodes for electric furnaces, notes D’Silva. (7-9) An electric arc is

a device in which an electric current (a flow of electrons) is caused to flow between two points separated by a gas. The two points are called electrodes. The one from which the current originates is the cathode. The electrode toward which electrons flow is the anode. The term electric arc refers both to the device itself as well as to the electric discharge that takes place within the device. Arcs can make use of high, atmospheric, or low pressures and can contain a variety of gases. They have wide uses as luminous lamps; as furnaces; for heating, cutting, and welding; and as tools for certain kinds of chemical analysis…

In an electric arc, the energy needed to produce ionization comes from an external source, such as an electric generator. An intense stream of electrons flows into the cathode and then across the gas-filled gap to the anode. As these electrons pass through the gas, they cause ionization. Ions formed in the process make the flow of current between electrodes even easier…One example of an electric arc is a lightning bolt. In nature, two clouds can act as electrodes, or electric current may flow between a cloud and Earth's surface. In either case, current flows through the air, ionizing molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases in the atmosphere…

The simplest electric arc consists of two electrodes made of a conducting material and situated a short distance from each other. Air is the gas used in this arc. This kind of electric arc was first studied by English physicist and chemist Humphry Davy (1778–1829) in 1808. (8-9)

An electric arc furnace is a furnace that heats charged material by means of an electric arc. The advantage of an electric arc furnace is its ability to generate extremely high temperatures, around 2000 degrees Celsius.

A 3000-volt electric arc between two nails. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lichtbogen_3000_Volt.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.		An electric arc furnace. Source: http://www.banklands.com/images/Electric-arc-furnace.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.
Steel mill with two electric arc furnaces. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SteelMill_interior.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

Using an electric arc furnace, Canadian inventor Thomas Leopold “Carbide” Willson, then of Spray (now called Eden), North Carolina, in 1889 accidentally discovered the process for making calcium carbide from lime and tar. “While experimenting with an electric furnace with a view to obtaining the metal calcium by the reduction of its oxide in the electric arc, fused together a mixture of powdered lime and powdered anthracite, but upon opening the furnace, instead of finding, as anticipated, a quantity of white shining metal, he found instead a dark-coloured, heavy, crystalline substance resembling scoria or larva from a volcano. The material upon examination being found not to be the substance sought—its true character not being recognized—it was regarded as useless and was thrown into some water near by. Immediately the water began to effervesce, and so violent was the ebullition and so strong the odour of the gas bubbling out, that it attracted attention.” (10-11)

Canadian inventor Thomas Leopold “Carbide” Willson. Source http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innovations/023020-3030-e.html; accessed May 7, 2009.		John Motley Morehead, Jr. North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. Source: http://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/researchuniv/john-motley-morehead-jr-1870-1965/; accessed May 7, 2009.

What was the material? It was carbide of calcium (CaC2)! “It was put into water and the gas as it bubbled out was caught.” What was the gas? It was pure acetylene! “Thus was discovered the possibility of producing Acetylene synthetically upon a commercial scale.” (10) However, at the time of the discovery of the processes for making calcium carbide and acetylene, “there were no uses for either calcium carbide or acetylene.” Nevertheless, Willson filed for a patent (#541,138) on the process for manufacturing calcium carbide in 1892. (11)

Finding no one interested in buying the patents, Willson and Morehead “turned their attention to finding and promoting uses for the products themselves, beginning with acetylene in lighting. For example, Morehead built and operated from 1884-1886 the first commercial calcium carbide plant at Spray, N.C. “From this beginning, calcium carbide manufacturing spread around the world. Acetylene, used first for lighting homes, railways, mines, and marine buoys and then for oxyacetylene welding, became one of the foundations of the synthetic organic chemicals industry.” (11)

Chunks of Calcium carbide. Source: http://www.bikeit.eclipse.co.uk/cyclingprelycra/images/carbide.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.		Early 20th century calcium carbide and fuel “oil” containers. Source: http://www.cwmbran.info/carbide%20of%20calcium.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.
Metal drums containing calcium carbide. Source: http://img.alibaba.com/photo/11675192/Sale_Calcium_Carbide.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

National Carbon Company underwrote the development of uses of calcium carbide and, in 1895, “Carbide” Willson, as he became known, sold his American patents to this syndicate, married his California sweetheart and decamped to Canada to develop the carbide industry there. (12) In 1898, the syndicate began producing acetylene by the calcium carbide process.

In 1899, Morehead opened a plant at Kanawha Falls, West Virginia, to make ferroalloys via processes earlier developed by Willson (now back in Canada) at Spray, N.C. (11) Kanawha Falls is located on the Kanawha River, about 1.5 miles below the junction of the Gauley and New Rivers (see Google map above). By “citing exigencies of the Spanish American War,” Morehead received permission from Elihu Root (1845-1937), U.S. Secretary of War (1899-1904), to construct a temporary timber dam at Kanawha Falls. (13-14) By 1901, Morehead completed the project, which “exploited the eight-foot natural falls to drive the first hydroelectric power station in the state” of West Virginia. (14) Ferroalloys are various alloys of iron used in the manufacture of steel. They receive their names from the added metal, e.g., ferrosilicon, ferromanganese, ferrochromium.

Kanawha Falls, West Virginia. Source: http://image57.webshots.com/157/5/74/20/2927574200068526197AdijEa_ph.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

In 1900, Dr. William Winthrop Betts of Salt Lake City, Utah, published one of the first national reports describing the scourge of acute rapidly progressive silicosis that sickened and killed workers months after exposure in various hard rock (silica) mining operations in the west, as described elsewhere. (5,15)

Ca. 1906, the Electro-Metallurgical Company, a West Virginia corporation, purchased Morehead’s ferroalloy plant at Kanawha Falls, and soon expanded Morehead’s “temporary dam works, without seeking a more applicable permit,” notes Cherniack. “The plans of the Electro-Metallurgical Company were inspired by…Moreland, who foresaw the intensive use of hydroelectric power in West Virginia to produce aluminum and alloys requiring high temperatures. As early as 1911 he had anticipated a more ambitious damming of the New River for electrometallurgical purposes. Twenty years would pass, however, before his original drafts were to be realized in the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel.” (11)

In 1917, the Electro-Metallurgical Company merged with the National Carbon Company, Linde Air Products Company, Prest-O-Lite Company and Union Carbide Company (formed in 1898) to form Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation. (16) This new company would undertake construction of Hawk’s Nest Tunnel “and dominate the economic development of the Kanawha Valley. In 1917, the U.S. Bureau of Mines, U.S. Department of the Interior published its important report on silicosis and its mitigation among miners in the Joplin, Missouri, zinc-mining district, as described elsewhere. (5) The Electro-Metallurgical Company remained a distinct unit within the Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation.

In 1920, Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation established Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Corporation. (17) “Its first product to become nationally known, Prestone antifreeze, was owed to the acquisition of the Clendenin Gasoline Company, of Clendenin, West Virginia in 1920.” The Clendenin Gasoline Company, which manufactured ethylene, launched the petrochemical industry in the world. (16,18)

Kanawha Falls power station. Source: http://k53.pbase.com/g4/61/606961/2/61113694.KanawhaFalls.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

2. Launching Hawk’s Nest Tunnel

Not surprisingly, “one of the first acts of the expanded corporation was to increase the size of the dam at Kanawha Falls.” Cherniack continues,

This turned out to be more complicated than building the original, primitive structure. The permit that the War Department had given…in 1899 had been revocable as well as limited, and the Electro-Metallurgical Company had good reason to anticipate trouble in winning a renewal. The Army Corps of Engineers had informed Congress as early as 1913 that control of the New River [a tributary of Kanawha, along with Gauley River, as noted above], like that of all other navigable rivers in the country, belonged to the federal government…In 1917, however, federal interference with private interference was unaggressive, and Union Carbide found a simple way to circumvent the problem of legality: it began extension of the dam without notifying the army. By 1918 two hundred feet of concrete were in place on the dam and a new powerhouse had been erected at Glen Ferris. A year later, when all construction was complete, the company finally notified the army of the modifications and applied for extension of the permit. The corporation’s fears had been justified. Permission was refused—but no action was taken to remove the new structures. Inaction, as well as regulation was within the federal government’s prerogative.

A great deal of was at stake for the expanded corporation. The possibilities for cheap and efficient generation of hydroelectric power in the region were enormous. Even today, though the metallurgical works at Glen Ferris were dismantled long ago, the sixty-five-year-old power station still produces five megawatts of electricity for the corporate successor to Union Carbide. But the potential of any plant built along the relatively calm flow of the Kanawha was infinitely less than that of one that might tap the swift waters of the New [River]…For several years the company made no public move to exploit that part of the river. Quietly, however, it acquired titles to key sections of the river bottom and adjacent lands. (Emphasis added) By 1924 topographic maps and blueprints showed a system of dams, tunnels, and powerhouses for the production of hydroelectric power. (18)

Meanwhile, Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation planned to build a new metallurgical complex at the village of Boncar, five miles below Glen Ferris (Kanawha Falls). “These works were to be far larger than those of Kanawha Falls, would require far greater resources of power,” notes Cherniack. (19)

Google map showing important sites in Fayette and Kanawha Counties, West Virginia. By M. O’Leary.

Cherniack continues,

With this in view, early in 1927 the company formalized its acquisitions on the New River by forming the New Kanawha Power Company to develop them for hydroelectric power generation. [Emphasis added] Ostensibly, this new enterprise was chartered to construct public utilities in West Virginia, but no serious attempt was made to pretend that New Kanawha was more than a legal fiction created by the parent company. The operating officer who presented the request to the Public Service Commission of West Virginia was Leonard Davis, the executive vice president of Union Carbide [& Carbon Corporation]. The chief engineer of the new company, O.M. Jones, had long been on the engineering staff of the Electro-Metallurgical Company. For several years before the new company was incorporated, he had supervised plans for the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel and the Boncar plant. [Emphasis added] The commission readily licensed the dummy company to develop and produce power for general public sales and for commercial use. In the company’s brief history, however, this power had only one purchaser: Union Carbide. The New Kanawha Power Company was an administrative chimera, combining solitary corporate control with minimal liability. Commissioned to produce hydroelectricity, it did not genera a single watt under its own name; a licensed public utility, its entire bounty was kept in private hands. (19)

Dayton adds, “Union Carbide often operated through New Kanawha Power to plan the construction of the tunnel, set the terms on which the work would be done, and supervise the construction. New Kanawha Power was…responsible for the “medical care, safety, precautions, ventilation, food, water and housing” on the project.” (Emphasis added) (20)

In May 1927, the New Kanawha Power Company filed with the federal government a declaration of intent to pursue its plan for the New River. This was to include two dams, two tunnels, and two power stations, as well as the plant at Boncar,” says Cherniack. “The site for the dam and tunnel were well chosen. Only a short distance upstream from Gauley Bridge, halfway to the spectacular promontory known as Hawk’s Nest, the river bursts out of the New River Gorge, in which its formidable volume of water has been confined between narrow walls for over sixty miles.” (21) In addition, the site for the tunnel’s inlet was 162 feet higher elevation than the tunnel’s outlet. When the water emerged from the tunnel, its “caged ferocity” would power the four generator turbines, which generated the electricity destined for the new metallurgical plant at Boncar!

When the federal government did not act for several reasons, which are beyond the scope of this Biot Report, Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation filed the declaration of intent to pursue its plan for the New River with the State Public Service Commission, which gave its full approval to New Kanawha’s plans for development. (21-22) The commission remained docile throughout the huge construction project, savoring the huge benefits that “large infusions of capital from outside might bring” to West Virginia’s depressed economy. “The Alloy plant represented just the kind of modern industry that might prove a successor to coal mining.” (23)

Indeed, “the manner in which the New Kanawha Power Company informed state officials of alterations in plans was cavalier,” avers Cherniack. “The original proposal was for two contiguous tunnels, each to have its own dam and power station….Two years later the company amended its declaration with construction plans that included only a single, larger tunnel and improvements on the old works at Glen Ferris…A similar vagueness characterized the company’s descriptions of the metallurgical plant it would build at Boncar. This was represented to be like the plant at Glen Ferris, which employed about 150 people. [A senior official at Union Carbide] implied to the commission that the hydroelectric station would provide power for several industrial sites. In fact, the Hawk’s Nest power station, and the enormous tunnel that served it, were intended solely for the use of the Boncar plant. The size of the tunnel and the capacity of the station—, which the company would later boast could illuminate the entire city of Charleston—suggest that the Boncar facility was planned from the first to become an industrial mammoth. Not long after the plant’s construction, the name of the town was changed to Alloy in honor of its chief product: ferrosilicon alloy, widely used in the steel industry. (24)

Aerial view of carbide ferro-alloy plant in Alloy, West Virginia; looking upstream on the Kanawha River. Source: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/193/450243814_4f43ea7f7c_o.gif; accessed May 7, 2009.		Rail cars filled with coal at Alloy, West Virginia. Source: http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/5/9/2/4592.1220616629.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

3. Working in Hawk’s Nest Tunnel

Of the 35 who bid on the construction rights for Hawk’s Nest Tunnel in September 1929, the lowest bidder, Rinehart and Dennis Company of Charlottesville, Virginia (home of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the University of Virginia), won the contract on March 13, 1930. Rinehart and Dennis was widely appreciated as a seasoned, quality company that had already drilled 51 tunnels, many for southern and eastern railroads.

There were penalties in the contract for the project extending beyond two years, so Rinehart and Dennis, under the watchful, directive eye of New Kanawha Power Company, under the watchful eye of Union Carbide & Carbon Company, broke ground on March 31, 1930. Cherniack writes, “Word that construction would soon begin had already spread throughout the southeastern United States. Workers were pouring into the Gauley Bridge area” at such a rapid rate, “many questions were raised as to how such speedy marshaling of a work force had been possible…According to Rinehart and Dennis, ‘The men employed, especially those in the tunnel, were largely recruited from workers who had previous experience in tunnel work or coal mining, since the power project site is in the midst of railway tunnels and coal mines…But [the local experience miners] were a small proportion of the total work force, which numbered nearly five thousand men. The male population of the county [Fayette] was over 80 percent white. According to Union Carbide’s own records, 65 percent of the workers were black…Few of these blacks came from Fayette Bounty…Only 738 whites ever worked inside the tunnel. The tunnel workers were then mostly migrants,” not local miners. (25)

Black migrant workers came on their own volition. They were never forced using press-gang methods, says Cherniack. Rinehart and Dennis did send recruiters to the Carolinas and Georgia to attract labor for the tunnel. One 18-year-old from South Carolina said he “first heard of the tunnel through a work acquaintance, a company stringer who was supplied with bus fare and a stipend to promote employment among southern blacks. This teenager, his father and his uncle had previously worked for Rinehart and Dennis on seasonal jobs in the Carolinas. “The boy paid his own fare to Gauley Bridge. He was immediately added to the rolls because he was known to several of the contractor’s foremen.” (26)

At least 3,000 of the 5,000 men who worked on the massive Hawk’s Nest Tunnel project worked inside the tunnel. Of these 3,000, 75 percent were black. Almost all of the foremen (68 men) and operators of heavy equipment were white.

The conditions inside the tunnel were dusty because the crews were blasting through crystalline sandstone most of the time, which generates splintery, butcher-knife-type silica dust flour. All of the problems associated with mining silica-rich rock had been identified and documented in a 1917 publication by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, as described elsewhere in great detail. (5,27) Remediation measures identified by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and used in mines in the U.S. substantially reduced mortality and morbidity. (5,28) Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation had taken core samples along the course of the proposed tunnel before construction began, and knew the rock was extremely high in silica (between 96 and 99 percent, for example, in shaft 1 at the powerhouse). Indeed, they captured all of the silica rock mined in the process of excavating the tunnel (some 300,000 tons in 175 rail cars of ore a day, according to Cherniack) and sent it by railroad to Boncar for later use as a critical raw material in manufacturing ferro-silicates. (28)

If dust remediation methods truly had been continuously used, as Union Carbide and Rinehart and Dennis witnesses subsequently testified en masse and in lockstep when an avalanche of worker lawsuits were filed, workers would not have developed silicosis to the extent they did (more below). “Wet drills were seldom used except on days when word was swept through the tunnel that the state mining inspectors were coming,” notes one source. (29)

One indicator of the stress of the tunnel work was the extraordinary work force turnover rate, as documented in Rinehart and Dennis payroll statistics. “Sixty percent of the men worked month tunnel less than two months, 80 percent less than six months, and 90 percent less than a year. The average length of employment was fifteen weeks for a black worker, sixteen for a white worker.” (30) Of course, there were many reasons for leaving tunnel employment, including employee roughness by foremen at the lower level of company authority (there were no unions then and no procedures existed for arbitrating grievances), but inhalation of dust must have been one of them.

“The ribs of the tunnel through Gauley Mountain are starting to take shape. Source: http://www.wvgazette.com/mediafiles/thumbs/275/218.9/101907_I090331170355.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.		Hawk’s Nest Tunnel workers. Source: http://www.asmalldoseof.org/historyoftox/1900-1930s/hawkminers.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.
Hawk’s Nest Tunnel interior. Source: http://img.geocaching.com/cache/3908_200.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

Unfortunately, Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation/New Kanawha Power Company/Rinehart and Dennis never measured airborne silica dust, “a remarkable oversight, given the availability of techniques,” notes Cherniack. Thus, after-the-fact attempts to sort out the truth during lawsuit trials degenerated to he-said-they-said anecdotes, covered admirably by Cherniack. (31) The suing workers said the dust was “so thick that a man working in said tunnel could only see a man to distinguish him from ten to twenty feet” while officials of the New Kanawha Power Company testified they “never saw dust, or at least not enough to say it was dusty” and that the quality of air inside the tunnel even exceeded that in the courtroom. (32)

4. The Company Physicians

As noted above, New Kanawha Power was…responsible for the “medical care, safety, precautions, ventilation, food, water and housing” on the project.” (20) Rinehart and Dennis provided medical services. “The quality of these services cannot now be clearly determined,” notes Cherniack, “but they were required by terms of the contract with Union Carbide, which read

The Contractor shall provide adequate medical and surgical care for his employees; and for this purpose shall designate one or more approved competent licensed physicians, satisfactory to the Engineer, who shall at all times be in readiness to supply such medical and surgical services, shall have the care of its employees, shall inspect their dwelling, and stables and sanitaries as often as required, and shall supply medical attendance and medicines to the employees whenever needed. The Contractor shall provide from approved plans, one or more rooms properly fitted for the purpose of an emergency hospital. (33)

The two physicians hired for the purpose were “Dr. Mitchell” of Mount Hope, West Virginia, and “Dr. Simmons” of Alloy, who was associated with the Electro-Metallurgical Company. They received 25 cents per person examined. “During the subsequent trials and congressional hearings, many derogatory comments were made on the failure of these two men to appreciate the health hazards connected with tunnel work.” Indeed, Dr. Mitchell said at one trial that when “he undertook work for Rinehart and Dennis he knew nothing whatever of silicosis or other occupational diseases.” According to the Charleston Gazette (March 29, 1933), Dr. Mitchell admitted in retrospect seeing more than a hundred men affected with silicosis. “He claimed to have sent many of them to the Coal Valley Hospital…[He] routinely assured ailing workers that their symptomatic coughs and pneumonia were a transient condition, “tunnelitis,” caused by harmless rock dust.” (34) Cherniack is incredulous that “two physicians who practiced in a coal mining region and worked either for or with a company expert in tunnel construction should be ignorant of a disease so common as silicosis.” (34)

Cherniack, an occupational physician, downplays the importance of the incompetence of the two physicians, saying their “lack of acuity…was not a decisive factor in the evolution of lung disease, because medical competence would not have been a successful first line of defense against exposure to silica dust. It has long been a cardinal principle of industrial medicine that initial measures should rest on quantification and control of exposures rather than on the recognition and treatment of symptoms of disease.” (34)

5. Dr. Leroy Harless

Dr. Leroy Harless was a prominent local and “unusually knowledgeable physician” skilled in mining medicine and pneumoconioses, notes Cherniack. Astonishingly, Dr. Harless applied for one of the two company physician positions with Dennis and Rinehart, but was turned down, according to his son. When tunnel workers got no relief from Drs. Mitchell and Simmons, they often requested the services of the “old doctor” whose office was located at Gauley Bridge. Skidmore wrote in his literary depiction of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster, the following:

During those days women went from one shack to another, asking for home cures, for broths and teas extracted from bark and herbs, that might cure a misery in the chest. They placed onion poultices over their husbands’ chests at night and set a brew of red pepper, sugar and vinegar on the back of the stove to simmer, for word had gone around that it would relieve a congestion in the lungs. Once Nettie Pugh borrowed two dollars from her neighbors and walked to Gauley Bridge after [Dr. Harless]. She had made four trips after the company physician, but when he finally arrived he only examined Roger’s eyes, listened to his chest, left a bottle of pills and departed.

“I gib’ him dem a’ready. It don’t do him no good.”

“Give him some more.”

That night Nettie had lain awake, listening to Roger’s rough, labored breathing, lifting him up in bed when he seemed in danger of choking. The following morning she took the ninety cents left form his last pay, borrowed the rest and went for the old doctor who had served Gauley Bridge for years before any industry but mining had entered the ancient valley.

[Harless’] examination was thorough, and Nettie, standing at the foot of the bed, watched him with wide, patient eyes.

“It’s something they get in the tunnel,” the old doctor stated, pouring out a bottle or faddish-yellow medicine. “I haven’t been able to find out what it is yet. It may pass, but I don’t think so. Meantime this will give him some relief.” (35)

Dr. Harless positively diagnosed “silicosis in more than 150 living tunnel workers and in the cadavers of nine others…He first recognized an association between tunnel dust and silicosis in 1931 and had made the first diagnosis of acute silicosis that appeared on ax death certificate in Fayette County.” During his examination of some 175 tunnel workers, he said, “obtained the worker’s industrial, medical, and family histories, conducted a physical examination [and] recorded the results.” (36) Of these 175 tunnel workers, 95 percent had silicosis.

6. Undertaker Hadley C. White

In 1931, Rinehart and Dennis paid money to Hadley C. White, an undertaker from Nicholas County, to dispose of an undetermined number of unclaimed corpses of workers who had died on the job. White received $55 per burial, $25 more than the going rate for burying the county’s paupers, and buried around 30-33 bodies, each in its own pine box and own flat gravestone in a cemetery he had laid out on his family farm on the outskirts of Summersville, the county seat of Nicholas County. White dispensed with embalming except when transport and burial were delayed by bad weather. White’s son, Howard, who assisted his father in the burials, recalls 40 such burials. Howard also recalled, “They were buried in homemade wooden boxes made of inch-thick oak. They were buried in their work clothes, in some cases still covered with the silica dust that killed them.” (39)

In a popular account, which Cherniack cannot confirm, White supposedly performed 169 such burials. (37) Union Carbide’s internal report on mortality noted 67 requests for White’s services—5 for whites and 62 for blacks. (38) Of these 67, White buried 45 on his farm, noted Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation.

Cherniack continues, “In fact, business was so brisk that White established a temporary morgue in Gauley Bridge, thirty-five miles from his mortuary in Summersville…The White family contends that the cost of shipping the remains of migrants to their homes necessitated the higher fee [of $55/body]. Records show that the corpses of ten black men employed by Rinehart and Dennis were shipped to their homes in the South,” mainly in North Carolina and Tennessee. (38)

Hartman sheds additional light on the number of bodies hauled away from Hawk’s Nest Tunnel area in 1930-1031. He writes,

Jim Crow laws of [the era in which Hawk’s Nest Tunnel was built] prohibited black workers from being buried in ‘white’ cemeteries. Since there were no official black cemeteries nearby, some of the first African-American workers to die in the tunnel were buried next to a slave cemetery behind Summersville Presbyterian Church. But the growing number of African-American deaths created the need to find a burial ground in the vicinity of the construction site…The Hawks Nest tunnel workers began getting g sick within six to eight weeks on the job, making the need for an efficient way to dispose of the bodies even more acute for [Rinehart and Dennis]. “Some of them were shipped home, and their arrival at the local train station may have been the first time their relatives learned that a husband or son was dead…”There were rumors that others were buried along the riverbank and covered with rock from the tunnel.

In 2008, Hartman was determined to locate the resting place of the doomed Hawk’s Nest Tunnel workers. He found only one mass burial site on a corner of a Nicholas County farm owned by the mother of Hadley C. White, who operated White’s Funeral Home in Summersville when the Hawks Nest project was underway. “The farm was apparently used as a burial site to skirt segregation laws of the era that extended to death as well as life. Hartmann turned up a record of Hadley White testifying during a 1936 hearing that he had buried 58 to 60 Hawks Nest workers, including ’33 Negroes on his mother’s farm because there was no other place to bury them.’” (39)

In his attempt to locate the cemetery, Hartman noted on a 1972 map a site near Summersville marked “unknown cemetery” containing 63 burials, all located on property that had once belonged to the White family.” He then learned that this cemetery had been relocated to make way for a four-lane highway (U.S. 19). The graves, which a now-defunct North Carolina firm moved in 1972, ended up in the lot of an abandoned housing project bought as right of way for U.S. 19 improvements. White finally located the graves when his eye caught the glint of something metallic at the end of a narrow paved road amid brush and young trees. The object turned out to be an aluminum stake bearing a small metal frame—one of four or five temporary grave markers still in place. The relocated cemetery contains only 34 or 35 graves, probably because of co-locating graves upon reburial. (39) Indeed, Cherniack notes, “A contractor from North Carolina was hired to exhume the graves and relocate any remains that might be found. No headstones or other markers for identification were discovered, but there were indentations in the earth. In forty-five of these, bits of wood and skeletal parts were found, having been relatively well preserved by properties of the soil.” (40)

Hartman said, ‘I’ve wanted to find these men for years, both to solve the mystery of where they were buried and, if nothing else, to apologize for the way they were treated. I expected to find a larger cemetery that wasn’t overgrown with brush and littered with trash that maybe had some kind of a marker explaining how these men died, but here they are, in an unmarked graveyard next to a highway. These people just disappeared. Progress and bigotry killed them. Even after their deaths, these men received very little hospitality in West Virginia. The part that makes me ached is that they didn’t receive any better treatment in 1972 than they did 40 years earlier.” (39)

7. Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Completion and Repercussions

When Hawk’s Nest Tunnel project was mostly completed in December 1931, Rinehart and Dennis paid the surviving workers and sent them away. Injured silicotic workers and the families of diseased silicotic workers filed hundreds of lawsuits, as described by Cherniack in vivid detail. “In a settlement that followed a deadlocked civil trial, the families of deceased workers with silicosis received compensation payments of $600,” notes Hartman. (39)

Albert Maltz. Source: http://www.moderntimes.com/maltz/image/maltz.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.		Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. Source: http://www.nndb.com/people/829/000080589/frances-perkins-sized.jpg; accessed May 7, 2009.

The silicosis disaster at Hawk’s Nest Tunnel could easily have remained a local (Fayette County) story in West Virginia. However, on January 8, 1935, Albert Maltz (1908-1985), an American author and one of the infamous blacklisted Hollywood Ten screenwriters, published a short story titled “Man on the Road” in the small left-wing magazine called The New Masses. The story “concerned a miner he picked up while driving through Gauley, West Virginia. In the story, Maltz described a man of about thirty-five years who was abandoning his family and going off to die. The hitchhiker dictated a letter to his wife explaining that he was unable to get work because no one would hire any miner who had worked in the tunnel.

Hit it all comes from thet rock thet we all had to dril. Thet rock was silica and hit was most all of hit glass. The powder frum this glass has got into the lungs of all the men war worked in thet tunel thru their breathin. And this has given to all of us a sickness. The doctors writ it down for me. Hit is silicosis. Hit makes the lungs to git all scab like and then it stops the breathin.” (41)

The following year (January 1936), the federal government became involved in the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel hullabaloo. The “Committee on Labor of the House of Representatives convened in order to consider a joint resolution ‘to authorize the Secretary of Labor [Perkins] to appoint a board of inquiry to ascertain the facts relating to health conditions of workers’ employed by a subsidiary of ‘the Union Carbide and Carbon Company.’ As the resolution read: ‘[O]ne hundred and sixty nine of said workers were buried in a field at Summersville, West Virginia, with cornstalks as their only gravestones and with no other means of identification.” (42)

Indeed, the Roosevelt Administration, after addressing the immediate crisis of the Depression, “turned its attention to the long-term social crises caused by the extreme dependence of the industrial work force. Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act [guaranteeing workers the right to organize] and the Social Security Act and even began serious discussions about national health insurance. The silicosis issue was a ‘natural’ for the newly revived Department of Labor under Frances Perkins, because it was a national problem that was causing dependence, disability, ill-health, and economic disorder among elderly, retired, unemployed, and disabled workers, the very groups that Perkins had targeted in the social security legislation.” (43) Perkins convened the 1936 National Conference on Silicosis, as described elsewhere. (44)

Rosner and Markowitz summarize the national silicosis frenzy prompted by the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster:

In the early years of the Depression, the crisis over silicosis seemed to mirror the crisis in American society in general. In the midst of increasing labor and management discord and in social and economic conditions that no one truly understood, the problem of disease, disability, and death seemed to be spiraling out of control. In these early days, the issue of chronic industrial disease, specifically silicosis, was subject to a broad examination in the professional as well as the popular press and the courts. For the first time, that was formerly the preserve of a narrow band of experts [e.g., physicians, mining engineers] gained the attention of labor, management groups, insurance executives, and finally government officials. The early efforts at defusing the crisis through amending workers’ compensation laws met with only partial success because of the complex local politics of labor and management in any given state. Without national legislative standards and without a uniform approach, such efforts sometimes created more turmoil rather than easing tensions. The Department of Labor therefore stepped in to help create a national consensus that would respect labor’s point of view and integrate labor into the decision making process that would define the parameters of the silicosis issue. (45)

Fifty years after the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel silicosis disaster, the U.S. Congress created and President Richard Nixon signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Act (December 29, 19970). OSHA became a new unit of the U.S. Department of Labor. “Its mission is to prevent work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths by issuing and enforcing rules (called standards) for workplace safety and health. The OSHA Act also created the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is a research agency focusing on occupational health and safety. NIOSH, however, is not a part of the U.S. Department of Labor.” (46)

8. Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation, Post Hawk’s Nest Tunnel

Rinehart and Dennis went bankrupt several years after the settling of the hundreds of lawsuits, but Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation escaped virtually unscathed. In 1957, Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation changed its name to Union Carbide Corporation. In 1984, the Union Carbide India Limited plant disaster occurred at Bhopal, India. In 1986, Union Carbide Corporation divested its agricultural products business. On August 4, 1999, Union Carbide Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.

9. Ending

By the end of 1937, forty-six states had enacted laws covering workers afflicted with silicosis, which authorities viewed as the prototypical occupational disease. OSHA has been fulfilling its mission since 1970. A country club sits (once intended for the pleasure of the Union Carbide staff, now privately owned) on top of where Camp 1 for the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel workers once stood. (40) West Virginians have erected no signage in remembrance to the fallen silicotic miners at the country club or at the cemetery of the unknown African-Americans. The military does a better job of honoring its fallen heroes than certain soulless corporations. Because there has been no atonement for the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster, eighty years later, it still inflames and disrupts. It is difficult for this writer to find a redeeming quality in the perpetrators of this disaster—the senior management team of the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. The Hawk’s Nest Tunnel was so beautifully built that it works as well today as it did 80 years ago.

Notes:

1. Hubert Skidmore: Hawk’s Nest. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004, p. 30.
2. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 12.
3. Hubert Skidmore: Hawk’s Nest. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004, p.viii.
4. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 104-105. Cherniack writes, “An estimated toll of more than seven hundred men, arrived at through a series of necessarily speculative but consistently conservative calculations, may well be too small. It is clear that many deaths occurring in Fayette County went unreported.”
5. SEMP Biot Report #621: “Death by Silicosis: The American Experience, 1880-1920.” May 5, 2009. Available at http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=621.
6. Hubert Skidmore: Hawk’s Nest. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004, p. ix.
7. Themistocles D’Silva: The Black Box of Bhopal. Victoria, BC, Canada: Trafford, 2006, pp. 27-28.
8. “Electric arc.” ScienceClarified. Available at http://www.scienceclarified.com/Di-El/Electric-Arc.html; accessed May 7, 2009.
9. Dramatic YouTube video: “True electric arc.” Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQQMK1Rvq0A&NR=1 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqRkEMfEtTo; accessed May 7, 2009.
10. George Frederick Thompson: Acetylene Gas: Its Nature, Properties and Uses; Also Calcium Carbide, Its Composition, Properties and Method of Manufacture. Originally published in Liverpool by the author in 1898. Now available through Kessinger Publishing’s Rare Reprints, p. 25.
11. “Discovery of the commercial processes for making calcium carbide and acetylene.” Historic Chemical Landmarks, American Chemical Society. Available at http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/cal/index.html; accessed May 7, 2009.
12. “Thomas Leopold Willson.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Available at http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7775; accessed May 7, 2009.
13. John Alexander Williams: “Hawk’s Nest tunnel.” In West Virginia: A bicentennial history. New York, W.W. Norton, 1976, pp. 159-186.
14. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 9.
15. William Winthrop Betts: “Chalicosis pulmonum or chronic interstitial pneumonia induced by stone dust. Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 34, Number 2, January 13, 1900, pp. 70-74. Available for a small charge at http://jama.ama-assn.org/contents-by-date.1900.dtl; accessed May 7, 2009.
16. “History of Union Carbide Corporation.” Available at http://www.ucarbide.com/history/index.htm; accessed May 7, 2009.
17. The West Virginia State Archives holds records of the Union Carbide Corporation, as described at http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/ms2002-064.html; accessed May 7, 2009.
18. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 10.
19. Ibid, p. 11.
20. Tim Dayton: Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead.” University of Missouri Press, 2003, p. 18. Available at http://books.google.com/books?id=2LVMfXRXOc8C&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=20.%09Tim+Dayton:+Muriel+Rukeyser%E2%80%99s+The+Book+of+the+Dead&source=bl&ots=Pcpy4I2cBm&sig=UVhUWMOm481J_VwYy-jkoOwBQFM&hl=en&ei=suYQSvToDpzyswPS2cyIAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA18,M1; accessed May 7, 2009. “The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser was published as part of her 1938 volume U.S. 1. The poem commemorates the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. In this terrible disaster, an undetermined number of men died of acute silicosis after working on a tunnel project in Fayette County, West Virginia, in the early 1930s. After many years of relative neglect, The Book of the Dead has recently returned to print and has become the subject of critical attention. In Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Book of the Dead,” Tim Dayton continues that study by characterizing the literary and political world of Rukeyser at the time she wrote The Book of the Dead.” Source: http://www.amazon.com/Muriel-Rukeysers-Book-Dead-Dayton/dp/082621469X/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1242619453&sr=11-1; accessed May 7, 2009.
21. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 12.
22. Ibid, p. 13.
23. Ibid, p. 14.
24. Ibid, p. 15.
25. Ibid, p. 17.
26. Ibid, p. 18.
27. Edwin Higgins, A.J. Lanza, F.B. Laney and George S. Rice: Siliceous Dust in Relation to Pulmonary Disease among Miners in the Joplin District, Missouri.” U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines, Bulletin 132, 1917, Washington, D.C. Available at http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=joh;cc=joh;g=umtc;rgn=full%20text;idno=joh000006;view=image;seq=1; accessed May 5, 2009.
28. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 38,41.
29. Hubert Skidmore: Hawk’s Nest. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004, p. 185.
30. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 33.
31. Ibid, p. 46.
32. Ibid, p. 47.
33. Ibid, p. 36.
34. Ibid, p. 37.
35. Hubert Skidmore: Hawk’s Nest. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004, p.183. I am assuming that Skidmore’s Dr. Robinson of Gauley Bridge was a pseudonym for Dr. Harless of Gauley Bridge.
36. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, pp. 60-61.
37. Ibid, p. 59.
38. Ibid, p. 95.
39. Rick Steelhammer: “Hawks Nest worker graves lay forgotten for decades.” The Charleston Gazette, February 24, 2008. Available at http://wvgazette.com/News/200802230569; accessed May 7, 2009.
40. Martin Cherniack: The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, p. 111.
41. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz: Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the On-Going Struggle to Protect Workers’ Health. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006, p. 96.
42. Ibid, p. 97.
43. Ibid, pp. 101-102.
44. Ibid, p. 105.
45. Ibid, p. 104.
46. “Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” Wikipedia. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_Safety_and_Health_Administration; accessed May 7, 2009.

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Source: http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=622