Hawk's Nest Tunnel
| Hawk's Nest Tunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| use | Water supply for hydropower plant | |||
| place | Hawk's Nest, West Virginia | |||
| construction | ||||
| Client | Union Carbide | |||
| start of building | 1930 | |||
| completion | 1931 | |||
| planner | Rinehart and Dennis (R&D) out of Charlottesville, VA | |||
| business | ||||
| operator | New Kanawha Power Company | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| Hawk's Nest Dam | 38 ° 7 '11 " N , 81 ° 7' 55" W. | |||
| Hydroelectric power plant | 38 ° 8 ′ 52 " N , 81 ° 10 ′ 32" W. | |||
Map with all coordinates: The Hawk's Nest Tunnel is a tunnel tube at Gauley Bridge , West Virginia . The structure is 4.8 km long and transported water for a hydroelectric power plant operated by Union Carbide . It was laid out between 1930 and 1931. Hawk's Nest is the name of a hill on Gauley Mountain .
Silicosis disaster
During the construction of the pipe, up to several thousand workers died of acute silicosis due to a lack of work safety , sometimes within a year.
Union Carbide was involved in a tunneling project near Charleston in West Virginia from 1927, as a result of which many workers, mostly destitute African-Americans, died of silicosis. During the construction work on the approximately three-mile-long tunnel, the workers were exposed to high levels of dust unprotected. The workers were not given protective masks, but management staff wore appropriate masks during the brief inspection periods they were on the site. The incident also resulted in a Congressional hearing that found approximately 500 deaths. Since many workers were dismissed after the onset of illness or the completion of the tunnel and had moved on, a systematic evaluation could no longer take place.
Literary processing
Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) conducted investigative research into this incident. Hubert Skidmore (1909-1946) published his novella Hawk's Nest in 1941; it was reissued in 2004.
literature
- Martin Cherniack: The Hawk's Nest Incident: America's Worst Industrial Disaster. Yale University Press, 1986
- C. Keith Stalnaker: Hawk's Nest Tunnel, a forgotten tragedy in safty's history. In: Professional Safety, American Society of Safety Engineers, October 2006, pp. 27-33.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helen Lang: Excavation of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel, Gauley Bridge, WV, 1930-31, and Acute Silicosis. ( online ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. )
- ^ Martin Cherniak: The Hawk's Nest Incident , Yale University Press 1986
