‘A tragedy worthy of the pen of Victor Hugo’: the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WOWK) — Considered one of the worst industrial disasters in U.S. history, the Hawks Nest Tunnel incident shines a light on the labor conditions of early 20th-century America.

The tunnel goes through Gauley Mountain between Ansted and Gauley Bridge, WV, and was designed to divert water from the New River to a hydroelectric plant powering a Union Carbide metallurgical plant in the nearby town of Alloy.

Construction on the project ran between 1930-32 and involved the workers drilling and blasting a 32-36 foot wide tunnel through more than three miles of solid rock.

What made the job especially dangerous was the presence of exceptionally pure silica. The silica dust would often be so thick in the air that the workers could only see a few feet ahead inside the tunnel, and they would usually emerge covered in the white dust.

Over the course of construction, it’s estimated that at least 764 of the 2,982 workers who worked inside the tunnel, most of whom were southern African Americans, succumbed to silicosis, a lung disease caused by the workers breathing in the heavy concentration of silica dust.

Few of the tunnel workers were able to work in the tunnel for more than a year, and only 20 percent lasted more than six months.

What contributed the most to the high presence of silica dust was the lack of commonsense safety measures, such as proper ventilation, dust control and limited breathing protection. One preventative method for the dust was wet drilling, but the practice proved to be much slower than dry drilling, so it was rarely used during the project.

Since the project was licensed as a civil engineering project, these miner safety measures were not enforced, despite the companies involved knowing about the dangers before the tunneling began.

In the years after the tunnel was completed, 538 lawsuits were filed against the contractor Rinehart and Dennis as well as Union Carbide’s corporate entity, the New Kanawha Power Company. The out-of-court settlement was $200,000.

“The largest trial ended with a hung jury, evidence of jury tampering, and generous compensation to the plaintiffs’ attorneys,” according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia .

There were no nearby burial sites for the black workers, so many of them ended up buried in an open field on Martha White’s farm near Summersville.

A 1936 subcommittee investigating the disaster said, “The record presents a story of a condition that is hardly conceivable in a democratic government in the present century. It would be more representative of the Middle Ages. It is the story of a tragedy worthy of 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 a mere existence wage under almost intolerable conditions.”

The tunnel was ultimately a success, and it still helps provide power to this day. However, its first inspection since the 1930s was performed in 2020.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WBOY.com.