Remembering the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster in the 1930s, from 1989 Video Those Who Know Don’t Tell

This clip is describing the infamous Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster is from Abby Ginzberg’s award-winning 1989 documentary, tracing the history of the struggle to rid the workplace of occupational hazards. This disaster is one of the worst industrial tragedies in the history of the United States. In 1930, construction began on a three-mile tunnel through Gauley Mountain located between near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. When finished, the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel would divert water from the New River to a hydroelectric plant to produce electricity for Union Carbide’s metals plant at Alloy, West Virginia. To build the tunnel through solid rock, hundreds of unemployed men were recruited for construction jobs on the project. At least two-thirds of these workers were African Americans. These workers drilled and blasted a 32-36-foot tunnel through rock that contained high levels of silica. The dry drilling technique that was used released large amounts of silica dust into the air. This made working in the tunnel very dangerous. Black diggers emerged from the hole in the mountain covered with layers of white dust. The interior of the tunnel was a white cloud of silica, impairing vision and clogging the lungs of workers. Because the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel was licensed as a civil engineering project, even the most modest forms of safety were not applied. Workers labored in confined spaces with poor ventilation, a lack of dust control, and limited use of personal breathing protection. Within months, workers became sick from breathing silica dust. They showed signs of a lung disease called silicosis but were treated for a new disease called “tunnelitis”. Silicosis is a disease that infects the lungs leading to a shortness of breath and eventually death. Silicosis cannot be cured. Employment in the tunnel rarely lasted more than a year. The dangerous working conditions and silica dust rendered many of the men unable to work. Excavation of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel led to the greatest death toll ever from silicosis in the United States. Of the approximately 5,000 men that worked on the project, an estimated 2,900 worked inside the tunnel. Of these men, silicosis claimed the lives of at least 764 workers. A majority of the dead were African Americans. In the years after the project was completed, many more would die due to their exposure to silica dust while working in the tunnel. With the death of so many black workers, the problem of where to bury them became an issue. There was no burial sites nearby for black workers. To solve the issue, a funeral parlor in Summersville, West Virginia located an open field on Martha White’s farm. This field became the burial grounds for many of the African Americans who died working on the tunnel project. Today, the tunnel continues diverting water from the New River to produce hydro-electricity for the Alloy plant. Silicosis has been designated as an occupational disease with compensation for workers. However, tunnel workers at Hawk’s Nest were not protected by these laws. A National Park Service memorial on Highway 19 was established to remember and honor the many victims of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel tragedy. For more on this tragedy, visit www.wvencyclopedia.org/articl... . Thanks to filmmaker Abby Ginzberg for allowing me to post clips from her wonderful 1989 film, Those Who Know Don’t Tell which is posted to this channel. To see more of her amazing work, visit the website www.socialactionmedia.com/.