Document QZq07ZyMMknmEDz6EvGReEpR

FILE NAME: Metropolitan Life (ML) DATE: 1986 DOC#: ML006 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Book Excerpt - The Hawk's Nest Incident America's Worst Industrial Disaster The Hawk's Nest AMERICAS WORST ,MARTIN CHERNIACK, m .d ., m .p .h . Foreword by Philip J. Landrigan, m.d . A.and Anthony Robbins, m.d . s .. . Yale University Press Copyright 1986 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Susan P. Fillion and set in Baskerville text and Americana display type by David E. Seham Associates. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, N.Y. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cherniack, Martin, 1948The Hawk's Nest incident. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Quartz fibers--Toxicology--West Virginia--Gauley Bridge. 2. Silicosis--West Virginia--Gauley Bridge. 3. Hawks Nest Tunnel (W. Va.) 4. Construction workers Diseases and hygiene--West Virginia--Gauley Bridge. 5. Union Carbide Corporation. I. Title. RA1231.Q37C48 1986 363.1'79 86-7088 ISBN 0-300-03522-5 (alk. paper) The paper in this book meets the guidelines fo r permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines fo r Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vi Foreword vii Acknowledgments x Introduction t Preparation for Disaster 7 Working in the Tunnel 24 Recognition of Disaster 52 A National Issue 81 How Many Died? 89 Epilog 106 Appendix: Epidemiological Study 112 Notes 171 References 184 Index 189 A half century ago in a rem ote place, m ore than seven hundred persons m ay have died to build the H aw k's Nest T unnel. Those who succumbed m edieval plague: the mysteries o f rock dust were sustained by public an d in d u stria l policy, not by technical ignorance. H aw k's N est was born in the transform ations o f a new industrial age, so ju d g m e n t o f the events there must be based on unrelated criteria: the fate o f the men, the companies that created the tunnel, and the future recognition o f in d u stria l disease. T h e re is a sym m etry in this study w ithout nam es. Its subject, in d u stry o f scale, is also an anonym ous process, consisting of great num bers of men and great num bers o f replaceable mechanical parts, som etim es treated without distinction. As such, analogies may sum m on the language of war rather than that of economy. As when h e a rin g th e toll o f soldiers d ead in w ar, it is n atu ral to ask ab o u t th e men o f G auley Bridge, "W hat did they win?" For them selves the workers won nothing at all except a brief respite from the poverty that afflicted millions o f others during the G reat D epression. T h ere was no glory, except for Union Carbide, which b oasted fo r years that the H aw k's N est hydroelectric plant could il lum in ate th e entire city o f C harleston. T h e re was certainly no sym pathy or gratitude. T he trials, the hearings, and the sometimes unfavorable national attention they b ro u g h t were as unwelcome to the citizens o f Gauley B ridge as they were to U nion C arbide an d its contractor. T h e m igrant workers, looked upon from the first with suspicion and contem pt, became the "undesirables, mainly N egroes" who were the real source of the troubles. And, thanks to the legislators and courts o f West Virginia, there was no recom pense for misery o r even d e a th , but for the m eager settlem ents paid by Union C a rb id e 's were 106 Fpilog 107 contractor to a lew out of the thousands of workers. For the rest-- o r so it was widely re p o rted an d is still rem em bered-- w hen they could no lo n g er w ork they w ere evicted from the camps a n d driven away by force. O n the first th re a t o f suits, it was said, at least one o f the cam ps was b u rn e d to p rev en t its use by litigants who w aited in the area in the h o pe o f vindication in the courts. For th e sm aller num ber o f m en whose hom es were nearby, the prospects of local work were dim inished by the reluctance ot coal mine operators to hire m en who had been on the tunnel and who were allegedly m ore inclined to illness from dusty work. If even th e surviving w orkers gained little but m isery by their toil in the tunnel, what of their employers? R inehart and Dennis could boast o f having built, with extraordinary speed and efficiency, a hydro electric com plex that was and remains an engineering marvel. Yet deaths, court costs, and settlem ents took a heavy toll on a company whose principal resource was an army of cheap m igrant laborers. Rine h a rt and D ennis had established an enviable rep u tatio n by its con struction of m any tunnels, dams, and power stations before it broke g ro u n d on the tunnel th at w ould be its greatest en g ineering challenge and success. Yet the com pany would never again com pete for a major project. W ithin five years its assets were largely liquidated, its successors being purely local firm s in Charlottesville, Virginia. W hat, th en , o f th e com pany that owned it all? T h e U nion Carbide and Carbon C orporation had conceived the vast project and planned every detail o f the dam, the tunnel, the power station, and the plant at Alloy to which they would supply a never-ending flow o f electrical power. It had hired the contractor, dictated schedules and provisions for the w orkers' health and protection, and closely supervised every aspect o f the operation. It had also taken care to separate itself and its ephem eral representative, the New Kanawha Power Com pany, from legal responsibility for the fate of the workers. W hat did it have to show for its vision and enterprise? For a tim e its grandiose dream s were fully realized, an d perhaps surpassed. Before the First W orld W ar the inventive plans o f Major M oreland, fo under of the Electro-Metallurgical Company, had over reached themselves. T h e m odest diversion of the Kanawha River at Glen Ferris for the electrically powered molding of high-tem perature alloys was a com m ercial failure. T here were no m arkets for the com pan y 's alu m in u m , th o u g h th e discarded pro d u ct w ould find a use as grave m ark ers above the d ead o f Fayette County. B ut M oreland's dream s had lived on in the am bitions of the successor com pany, chal lenging m ountains and the natural limits of rivers and muscle. Union C arbide had predicted th at the H aw k's Nest hydroelectric project would require seventeen years o f continuous operation to redeem the initial investm ent. Flic costs o f construction were paid for in half that EpilOJ! 108 time. A new war had meanwhile created a dem and for the metals that U nion C arbide produced at Alloy, and the m uck and the rock ex tracted from Gauley M ountain were fashioned into the steels and metals o f trium phant enterprise. In ju st forty years the crude, semi industrial operation at Glen Ferris had been transform ed, by the Alloy plan t a n d th e H aw k's N est T u n n el, into th e ce n te r o f the A m erican ferrosilicon industry, employing forty-four hundred persons and powering twenty great furnaces. F rom th e stan d p o in t o f the U nion C arb id e C om pany, the H aw k's Nest T u n n el had m ore than justified itself. T h ere was a unique mis m atch between a primitive, poorly paid, and unprotected labor force and an ind u stry ahead o f its time, able to utilize the most m odern eq u ip m e n t a n d techniques. T h e p ro o f o f in d u strial precocity was the Alloy plant itself, which would rem ain com petitive for half a century. It is also in this m ism atch betw een a highly m echanized technology and unskilled physical labor that much of the tragedy at Gauley Bridge can be understood. U nion C arbide had won an easy and relatively cheap victory over th e w orkers who b ro u g h t suits over claim s o f silicosis. N ot all o f its en co u n ters in co u rt w ere so quickly over, o r so successful. As was re co u n ted in c h a p te r 1, the com pany h a d originally subm itted its pe tition to dam the New River to the Federal Power Commission, but the governm ent had taken no action. U nion C arbide had then turned for perm ission to the Public Services C om m ission o f W est Virginia, w hich p ro m p tly g ra n te d it, as it h ad d o n e with all th e com pany's re quests. In 1934, however, in the midst o f the silicosis trials, the Federal Pow er Com m ission bro u g h t suit against U nion C arbide, claim ing full jurisdiction over the New River and, by extension, over the artifacts th at affected its flow. In the following year, tru e to form , the state cam e to th e co m p any's aid. T h e a tto rn e y g en eral, H o m er A. Holt, who w ould soon becom e g o vernor (and later th e co m p an y 's chief counsel), arg u ed the rights o f Union C arbide before the United States S uprem e C ourt. T he case dragged on, however, for thirty years, the federal governm ent having decided that the New River case was central to its effort to win a broad decision on its jurisdiction over water rights. In 1964 the governm ent finally prevailed. In practice this m eant that U nion C arbide had merely to install stream gauges and fishways at the H aw k's Nest Dam. T h e governm ent nevertheless won, and retains, the right to purchase the tunnel and pow er plant, together with the sm aller facility at Glen Ferris, in 1991. T h e p u rch ase price o f 1935 will still hold: $11.2 million. In four decades o f involvem ent with the H aw k's N est T u n n e l, federal attorneys w ere co n cern ed exclusively with the cost o f water, not the cost o f disease. For U nion C arbide this final reck o n in g has been anticipated by o th e r exigencies. By the 1970s the Alloy p lan t h ad reached the end E pilog 109 o f its profitable life, retired not by obsolescence bu t by the decline o f the dom estic steel industry and the expansion o f the ferrosilicon in dustry into the developing world with its ch eap er resources and labor costs. In 1981 U nion C arbide sold its ru stin g hulk at Alloy, and its entire electrom etallurgical division, to a N orw egian firm, the Elkem Metals Company. T h e company that had begun its existence in a m odest m erger in the m ountains o f West V irginia had by this time become a vast corporation with extensions in th ree continents. In 1984, however, its prestige suffered a severe blow w hen an accidental release o f toxic fum es from its chemical plant in B hopal, India, took the lives of m ore than two thousand persons, and engendered a great many lawsuits against the company. W hereas the deaths at Gauley Bridge had won only fleeting interest in their own country, the tragedy at Bhopal focused the attention of the world on U nion Carbide. U nder a year o f intensified scrutiny, U nion C arb id e's relationship to West Virginia also underw ent a reassessment. T h e com pany adm itted that twenty-eight relatively harmless incidents sim ilar to those at Bhopal had also occurred in recent years at a sister plant at Institute, West Virginia, fifty miles west o f Gauley Bridge. A m ore serious escape of fum es at the same plant less than a year later forced the com pany publicly to concede carelessness in its operations. In m id -1985 Union C arbide announced that, because o f a decline in the profitability of its far-flu n g enterprises, it was planning retren ch m en t. T h e corpo ra tio n 's long-term fu tu re is in som e doubt. I f b uilding th e H aw k's Nest T u n n e l won fo r U nion C arbide only a tran sito ry re tu rn on its investm ent o f h u m a n lives, is there nothing else to show fo r it? A lthough the o ccurrence at Gauley B ridge passed for the m ost part w ithout notice or was soon forgotten, it did help to call to public attention the dangers o f silicosis. T his im pact was point edly described in the classic study o f silicosis by William G. Cole and Lewis G. Cole, Pneumoconiosis: The Story o f Dusty Lungs. William Cole h ad stu d ied some tw enty X-rays o f lungs m ark e d by acute silicosis am ong workers at Gauley Bridge and had traveled to the area under the sponsorship o f the J o h n B. Pierce F o u n d atio n , o f New Haven, Connecticut. His findings were significant for his own medical re search, and he em phasized their implications for national policies on industrial health as well: "Popular interest in silicosis, stimulating social and legislative activities and affecting judicial decisions, was notably accentuated by the new spaper notoriety o f the Gauley B ridge episode."1 On 26 February 1936, only three weeks after the congressional subcom m ittee had issued its re p o rt on the G auley B ridge episode, Secretary o f Labor Frances Perkins called for a national conference on silicosis, which first convened two m onths later. Medical, economic, legal, and insurance committees were established to address the haz- E pilog HO ards and needs o f the five hundred thousand A m erican workers al legedly exposed and the one h undred thousand afflicted with silicosis. From these ambitious and hum anitarian beginnings, hopeless dead locks en su ed ; national legislation was not fo rth co m in g . It seem ed as though the Gauley Bridge tragedy had never occurred. T h e existence o f acute silicosis was sum m arily dismissed with th e observation that ru m o r attributed a few cases to exposure o f less th an one-and-a-half years, but that symptoms were m ore characteristic after exposure of ten or twenty years. O f the three national advisers to the conference from private industry, one was an official o f U nion Carbide. As late as 1940, acute silicosis rem ained e x e m p t fro m the category o f com pensable diseases. As the Coles would write, A cute silicosis is not com pensable in any fo rm u n d e r the p resen t accepted definition, and the m anner in which legislatures and even medical investigators have ignored the rights o f these victims has been a national disgrace. . . . Individuals o f this g ro u p , though few in num ber, present a serious social problem . T hey deserve com pensation a n d ad e q u ate com pensation as soon as th e diagnosis is established o r certainly as soon as sym ptom s appear. Such a victim is incapacitated for fu rth e r labor in a dusty industry o r any o th e r industry; th e m ost stren u o u s w ork o f which he is ca pable is th a t o f n ig h t w atchm an--p e rh a p s o n a p art-tim e basis.2 N ot all was in vain, however. By the end o f 1937, forty-six states had enacted laws covering w orkers afflicted with silicosis. W here the federal governm ent had failed, the states, through the workers' compensation system, had recognized silicosis as the prototypical occupational disease. In federal action and state legislation to protect the health of future generations o f w orking m en, the workers who died at Gauley Bridge had helped to build an im posing m onum ent, though no names are en g rav ed u p o n it. B u t in th e place itself, w hat is left to see th at m ight rem ind a visitor that a great tragedy once occurred there? T he tunnel, cleansed o f deadly d u st by th e ru sh o f water, will rem ain forever in visible. Its p resen ce is revealed only by a ro a d sign th a t praises tech nology w ithout m entioning history, and by countless tons o f silica b ea rin g rock d u g fro m the tu n n el an d d u m p e d alo n g th e riv er's edge because th ere was n o m eans o f o r utility in tra n sp o rtin g it to Alloy. T h e d am still blocks th e flow o f the New R iver at H aw k's Nest. It will rem ain, unless a few years hence the federal governm ent decides to resto re the riv er's m arginal navigability. N e a re r to G auley B ridge the pow er station continues to celebrate with its tireless energy the effi ciency o f U nion C arb id e's en g in eers and co n tra cto r. T h e camps w here the workers lived are long since gone-- destroyed, if th e ru m o r is tru e , to m ake them uninhabitable as soon as the work E pilog i 11 was over. W here C am p 1 stood th ere is now a co u n try club, once intended for the pleasure o f the U nion C arbide staff, now privately ow ned. No sign rem ains to recall the fo rm er occupants o f the site. T h ere did survive, however, long after the drilling and the trials an d the hearings w ere over, o n e silent re m in d e r o f fo rg o tten lives. T h e few who knew o f it had p referred to let it rem ain hidden. But in 1954 the family farm belonging to Hadley C. White, the undertaker so often em ployed by R inehart and Dennis, was bought by a local physician nam ed Eccles. Later, w hen the A ppalachian corridor was constructed through Nicholas County, several parcels of this land were sold to the state o f W est V irginia. It is th e policy o f the H ighway D e partm ent to probe for old cem eteries before building a new roadway. In Ju ly 1972 the d e p a rtm e n t's p ro b e r identified sixty-three potential grave sites in a plot on the Eccles farm that would be transected by the highway. A contractor from N o rth C arolina was hired to exhum e the graves and relocate any rem ains that m ight be found. No head stones or other m arkers for identification were discovered, but there were indentations in the earth. In forty-five of these, bits of wood and skeletal parts w ere found, having been relatively well preserved by properties o f the soil.