The Deadliest Industrial Disaster In US History | Plainly Difficult

When you think of a construction disaster, you probably like me think of some massive catastrophic sudden event. You know, like a structural collapse or an explosion. Although horrific, these often have relatively low death tolls when compared to the amount of drama involved in the actual failure. But today's subject is different for almost every reason. We're looking at a tunnel disaster with a death toll estimated to be a third of the construction crew. A staggering 1,000 people lost. The cause, although not grand in spectacle, was far more insidious, as each victim was closer to death after every breath taken on the job site. Our disaster today would result in a massive scandal and the United States worst industrial disaster, which even for the time completely was avoidable. Even more scary is that it's not very wellnown today. Today we're looking at the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. This video wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for my YouTube, Patreon, and Kofi members. If you want early access to the channel's videos, when you can from just £1 per month and as always, the links will be in the pin comment below. Our story begins like many other stories with a need for a new piece of infrastructure. In our case today, it is of a hydroelect electric plant needed to produce electricity for an alloy production facility near Gouley Bridge, West Virginia. Now, the company behind this project was the Union Carbide and Carbon Company, later better known as Just Union Carbide. Yes, the same company behind the Bopal tragedy, which would happen 59 years after our story. Oh, yes, I should say that our project began in the late 1920s. The project called for a tunnel to divert water from the fast flowing New River through Gaul Mountain. The first part of the project was to build a dam at Hawk's Nest to divert the New River into the area where the tunnel would start. As a side note here, the new river, ironically, is one of the five oldest rivers in the world. Anyways, this tunnel that was needed was to be 3 mi or 4.8 km long. To build it, it would require thousands of people to blast, cut, and remove the largely sandstone rock. Around 10,000 ft of the tunnel would be lined with concrete with the remainder of the project being left unlined, exposing the rock to the water flow. The project would be put out to tender and roughly 35 companies would put their hat into the ring. Reinhardt and Dennis would be the company that would get the contract. Funnily enough, they were the cheapest bidder. They would have two years to dig out the tunnel. They needed workers and fast. Luckily, the whole thing was unfolding during the greatest financial depression, aka the Great Depression, where there was an almost endless supply of desperate workers. Much of the workers would be migrating from outside of Fet County. The area was largely inhabited by whites, but the vast majority of the workers hired were African-Ameans, making up 2/3 of all project staff and a majority of those working inside the tunnel. The pay was via script at set at 25 cents per hour, meaning the company issued their pay in the form of tokens for the value of their pay, which forced them to spend at the company shops, which allowed Reinhardt and Dennis to inflate prices and essentially deflate the workers earnings. Construction would begin in 1930, and the 2-year race to completion would begin. Workers reportedly dug out 2 to 300 ft per day during their 10 to 15 hour shifts. The digging method was dry, which created massive amounts of dust instead of the much slower and safer wet drilling where spray water reduces airborne releases. Due to this excess dust, many workers would appear from the tunnels head to toe, completely white from the limestone. Vision and breathing was severely impaired during the workday in the tunnels and no PPE in the form of masks were provided to any of the workers. As soon as the works began, the turnover of employees was high. Few lasted more than a year. The reasons why? Well, we'll come back to that in a bit. Many more would refuse to go back into the tunnel after being overwhelmed with the suffocating dust after just one shift. The project made headway pushing deeper into the ground, but there were concerns on the horizon. They started dying. Within the first month of the project, many workers complained of severe breathing difficulties, coughing up blood and extreme fatigue. Clearly not normal activities for the largely young tunnel workers. Tens of workers would be dragged out of the tunnel having passed out in the fixed dust. Doctors were initially confused by the everinccreasing numbers of young healthy men being bedridden, drastically losing weight and unable to even lift their own limbs. Initially they diagnosed them with a new illness called tunnelitis. Doctors also misdiagnosed workers with pneumonia, even putting that as a cause of death for many. But what they actually had was a thing called silicosis. So what is silicosis? When you breathe in an area that is highly contaminated with sandstone dust without a mask, the air is drawn down into your lungs. In this air is high concentrations of silica dust. You know silica, the stuff used to make glass. This stuff is nasty as on a microscopic level, they can embed into tiny alvular sacks and ducts in the lungs. This reduces their ability to take in oxygen and express carbon dioxide. This causes the lungs to become inflamed and to produce mucus to try and flush out the silica dust. This leads to grazing and scarring within the lungs of which your body cannot heal. Usually silicosis rears its ugly head after just 5 to 10 years of heavy exposure and 10 to 20 years of light exposure over a prolonged period. But many at Hawks Nest showed signs of silicosis after just a few months in the tunnel, hinting at the extreme exposure level experienced by those within. The bodies started piling up. Management at Union Carbide started having an issue with the vast amounts of dead young men. The company bought a small tract of farmland to start digging graves. You see, because the majority of the dead were blank, they weren't allowed to be buried in the local cemetery. Now, all this silica they were digging up was actually very very valuable. And in order for Union Carbide to recoup more money, and after a vein was discovered by Reinhardt and Dennis, workers were ordered to start digging out the tunnel to be wider in order to harvest more of the material. A reported 300,000 tons per day of silica was mined during the project. You might be thinking that maybe back then people didn't just know the risks of the dust. Well, that would be a wrong assumption because guess what management wore during site visits? Yes, respirators. They knew it was dangerous and didn't care if the workers were exposed. And although known as a different thing, silicosis was very well documented for over 100red years and its prevention was too widely known at the time. Many died on site with an estimated toll at the time claimed by Union Carbide of just 100 people. The total is likely in excess of a thousand because there are much more bodies and mass graves than Union Carbide admitted to. And also because silicosis is actually a long-term silent killer. Workers who became ill often traveled back home out of state for care and died miles away from Hawk's Nest. This meant that numbers of the dead was harder to keep track of. But some of those who died on site weren't even recorded, being thrown into unmarked graves, leaving their families forever wondering where they'd ended up. Bodies would be relocated decades after the construction for the building of a road, further confusing the identity of many of the missing. Completion of the tunnel. Patanel would be completed by 1932 and the same year, the first of many legal cases against Union Carbide and Reinhardt and Dennis would be brought for wrongful death. But a poultry amount would be paid out after a number of failed trials. Both companies would never officially admit any wrongdoing. Both would argue down the death toll using the company doctor issued death certificates with the causes of death being listed as pneumonia trying to point the blame at a virus or bacterial infection running rampant in the workers camps. The human disaster would spark a house of representatives committee on labor probe in 1936 which would hear evidence through January and February of that year. Management from the companies involved declined to attend the hearings. Witnesses would state how break periods were cancelled, leaving workers down the tunnel for their full shift time and even sick workers being forced back into the tunnel at gunpoint. The investigation committee would say in their summary, "We suggest that the hearings be read in their entirety." The record presents a story of condition that is hardly conceivable in a democratic government in the present century. It would be more representative of the Middle Ages. It is a story of tragedy worth the pen of Victor Hugo. The story of men in the darkest days of the depression with work hard to secure, driven by despair and the stark fear of hunger to work for mere existence wage under almost intolerable conditions. Sadly, these words would mean nothing for the victims. With pitiful payouts, chronic illness, and premature death, the ones who paid for the tunnel with their lives would largely go forgotten to history. Union Carbide would forever play down the deaths, blaming the victims for their working conditions, and eventually the shade from the congressional investigation would disappear, and the disaster would largely be forgotten to time. But it would improve the working conditions somewhat by making respirators mandatory after the 1970s. Yes, that really did go quick, didn't it? So, that's my video on the Hawks Nest disaster. It's going to be a I think eight or nine on my scale. And this is what I've got for my root cause analysis card. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments below. This is a plain production. All videos on the channel are creative common attribution share like licensed [music] pl videos by me John in a currently quite warm corner of southern UK. I also have to say thank you much for watching and Mr. Music play us out please. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music]