美国国家公共电台 NPR Before Black Lung, The Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster Killed Hundreds

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Black lung, an epidemic¹ of the coal miners' disease, is killing² thousands of miners across Appalachia. NPR and the PBS program "Frontline" have been working together over the past year and uncovered that the U.S. government repeatedly failed to prevent the outbreak despite multiple opportunities to act. Black lung is caused by breathing in toxic⁴ silica dust found in the rock coal miners cut through to get coal. But this isn't the first time silica dust has ravaged⁵ a community. NPR's Adelina Lancianese has the story of what's called the Hawks⁶ Nest Tunnel disaster, which killed hundreds of workers nearly a century ago.

ADELINA LANCIANESE, BYLINE⁷: The Hawks Nest Tunnel is still considered an engineering marvel⁸ today. Water rushes through the tunnel in Gauley Bridge, W.V. Its gate is visible from the lush Hawks Nest State Park on the mountain above.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CHARLEY JONES: My name is Charley Jones. I live in Gamoca.

LANCIANESE: But almost 90 years ago, this place looked much different. This is tape from a 1930s newsreel about the project.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JONES: I lost three sons, from working in the tunnel, of silicosis. One is 18, one 23 and one 21.

LANCIANESE: It was the Great Depression. Americans were desperate for work. The tunnel project attracted thousands to West Virginia. And most of them were black men fleeing the South.

MATTHEW WATTS⁹: And it's hard for me to even imagine what these men felt like when they got here...

LANCIANESE: That's Reverend Matthew Watts.

WATTS: ...And realized what they had gotten themselves into.

LANCIANESE: He's a minister and an amateur historian in Charleston, W.V.

WATTS: The idea that I can go to a place and work. My kids can possibly go to school. I can have a right to vote. And I'm probably - have a very low probability of being hanged - right? - that was attractive. That was paradise. And when they got here, they found that, in this case, they had ended up in a hellhole, literally¹⁰.

LANCIANESE: A corporation called Union Carbide had an audacious plan for the workers. Construct a 3-mile-long tunnel through a mountain to divert river water and do it in just 18 months. Thousands of workers drilled holes and then stacked dynamite¹¹ in them to blast through pure quartz¹², a type of rock that kicks up silica dust. Silica dust is especially toxic. Once inhaled¹³, it slices at the lung like shards¹⁴ of glass, suffocating¹⁵ workers from the inside out. They came out caked in it, says Catherine Venable Moore, a writer who's documented the tragedy.

CATHERINE VENABLE MOORE: There was a nickname at the time for Gauley Bridge - the town of the living dead - because there were so many sick workers and, I think, also because they had this kind of ghostly presence when they were coming out of the tunnel being covered in this white silica dust.

LANCIANESE: Workers were pulling shifts of 10 to 15 hours. And they didn't understand just how quickly the dust could kill them. Here's another worker on that 1930s newsreel.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MINER: I worked in Hawks Nest Tunnel for four months. And each and every day that I work in that tunnel, I had to carry off 10 to 14 men - was overcome by the dust.

MARTIN CHERNIACK: The local doctors really were not quite clear, at first, what they were seeing. We had young, healthy people breaking down and developing acute and severe respiratory disease in a very short period of time. And there really isn't a lot of precedence for that.

LANCIANESE: Dr. Martin Cherniack of the University of Connecticut wrote a book about the tunnel. He estimates more than 760 workers died of silicosis in just 18 months' time.

CHERNIACK: So what would happen is they would become sick, profoundly short of breath, have severe weight loss, basically be unable to move and function and exercise themselves.

LANCIANESE: The African-American men were treated the worst. According to later congressional testimony¹⁶, they were denied 30-minute breaks in the clean air. They were paid less. And if they were too sick to work, their supervisors¹⁷ would force them from their beds at gunpoint. They died in droves. And they were quickly replaced - Matthew Watts.

WATTS: There was a mentality¹⁸, you know, that the contractors²⁰ that were supervising the Hawks Nest Tunnel had. Kill a mule²¹. Buy another one. Kill a man. Hire another one.

LANCIANESE: When one of those men was Dewey Flack. He was African-American, 17 or 18 years old. His age is unclear because, like hundreds of other black tunnel workers, only a few traces of Dewey's life and death remain. Records do show that Dewey was working hundreds of miles away from his home in North Carolina. He would never return.

SHEILA FLACK-JONES: My father mentioned when I was young that he did have a brother.

LANCIANESE: This is Dewey Flack's niece Sheila Flack-Jones.

FLACK-JONES: But the brother, he thought, had run away.

LANCIANESE: She didn't know anything about the Hawks Nest Tunnel or her Uncle Dewey's fate until NPR found her through genealogical records.

FLACK-JONES: I'm heartbroken that my family died thinking that he had run away, and they never knew the real truth.

LANCIANESE: Dewey died two weeks after his last shift in the tunnel. His death certificate is mostly blank. But cause of death is listed as pneumonia²². Like many other black workers who died at Hawks Nest, no next of kin³ was identified.

FLACK-JONES: I'm really, really angry. Here it is 100 years later. Do I mourn for my uncle, the one that I never knew? Do I mourn for my family because they thought he had left? Or do I mourn for what he would have become had he lived? These are things and questions that I'll never have an answer for.

LANCIANESE: Union Carbide and its contractor¹⁹ denied any wrongdoing in a congressional hearing. And lawsuits²³ filed against them were settled out of court. Local workers who died were interred²⁴ in their families' cemeteries²⁵. But black migrant workers like Dewey Flack were loaded together on wagons²⁶. Records suggest their bodies were eventually buried in unmarked graves in what's now called Whippoorwill Cemetery²⁷ in Summersville, W.V.

At a recent visit, fallen branches and loose cobblestones cover the ground. Rain pools in a coffin-shaped indentation, caving in from decades in the soft dirt. This grave is one of about 40. They are scattered²⁸ throughout the property, all identical, each with a single, wooden cross. It's impossible to know which one belongs to Dewey Flack. Adelina Lancianese, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILICOSIS IS KILLIN' ME")

JOSH WHITE: (Singing) I said, silicosis, you made a mighty²⁹ bad break of me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You can find our full investigation³⁰ into black lung on npr.org. The "Frontline" documentary "Coal's Deadly Dust" will be broadcast this coming Tuesday. You can see it on your local PBS station.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILICOSIS IS KILLIN' ME")

WHITE: (Singing) You robbed me of my youth and health. All you brought poor me was misery³¹.

1 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

2 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

3 kin   

n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的

参考例句：

• He comes of good kin.他出身好。
• She has gone to live with her husband's kin.她住到丈夫的亲戚家里去了。

4 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

5 ravaged   

毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫

参考例句：

• a country ravaged by civil war 遭受内战重创的国家
• The whole area was ravaged by forest fires. 森林火灾使整个地区荒废了。

6 hawks   

鹰( hawk的名词复数 )； 鹰派人物，主战派人物

参考例句：

• Two hawks were hover ing overhead. 两只鹰在头顶盘旋。
• Both hawks and doves have expanded their conditions for ending the war. 鹰派和鸽派都充分阐明了各自的停战条件。

7 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

8 marvel   

vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事

参考例句：

• The robot is a marvel of modern engineering.机器人是现代工程技术的奇迹。
• The operation was a marvel of medical skill.这次手术是医术上的一个奇迹。

9 watts   

（电力计量单位）瓦，瓦特( watt的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• My lamp uses 60 watts; my toaster uses 600 watts. 我的灯用60瓦，我的烤面包器用600瓦。
• My lamp uses 40 watts. 我的灯40瓦。

10 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

11 dynamite   

n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破)

参考例句：

• The workmen detonated the dynamite.工人们把炸药引爆了。
• The philosopher was still political dynamite.那位哲学家仍旧是政治上的爆炸性人物。

12 quartz   

n.石英

参考例句：

• There is a great deal quartz in those mountains.那些山里蕴藏着大量石英。
• The quartz watch keeps good time.石英表走时准。

13 inhaled   

v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. 她合上双眼，深深吸了一口气。
• Janet inhaled sharply when she saw him. 珍妮特看到他时猛地吸了口气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 shards   

n.（玻璃、金属或其他硬物的）尖利的碎片( shard的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Eyewitnesses spoke of rocks and shards of glass flying in the air. 目击者称空中石块和玻璃碎片四溅。 来自辞典例句
• Ward, Josh Billings, and a host of others have survived only in scattered shards of humour. 沃德、比林斯和许多别的作家能够留传下来的只是些幽默的残章断简。 来自辞典例句

15 suffocating   

a.使人窒息的

参考例句：

• After a few weeks with her parents, she felt she was suffocating.和父母呆了几个星期后，她感到自己毫无自由。
• That's better. I was suffocating in that cell of a room.这样好些了，我刚才在那个小房间里快闷死了。

16 testimony   

n.证词；见证，证明

参考例句：

• The testimony given by him is dubious.他所作的证据是可疑的。
• He was called in to bear testimony to what the police officer said.他被传入为警官所说的话作证。

17 supervisors   

n.监督者，管理者( supervisor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I think the best technical people make the best supervisors. 我认为最好的技术人员可以成为最好的管理人员。 来自辞典例句
• Even the foremen or first-level supervisors have a staffing responsibility. 甚至领班或第一线的监督人员也有任用的责任。 来自辞典例句

18 mentality   

n.心理，思想，脑力

参考例句：

• He has many years'experience of the criminal mentality.他研究犯罪心理有多年经验。
• Running a business requires a very different mentality from being a salaried employee.经营企业所要求具备的心态和上班族的心态截然不同。

19 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

20 contractors   

n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• We got estimates from three different contractors before accepting the lowest. 我们得到3个承包商的报价后，接受了最低的报价。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Contractors winning construction jobs had to kick back 2 per cent of the contract price to the mafia. 赢得建筑工作的承包商得抽出合同价格的百分之二的回扣给黑手党。 来自《简明英汉词典》

21 mule   

n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人

参考例句：

• A mule is a cross between a mare and a donkey.骡子是母马和公驴的杂交后代。
• He is an old mule.他是个老顽固。

22 pneumonia   

n.肺炎

参考例句：

• Cage was struck with pneumonia in her youth.凯奇年轻时得过肺炎。
• Pneumonia carried him off last week.肺炎上星期夺去了他的生命。

23 lawsuits   

n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权，耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
• I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多，赢的也多，输的也多。 来自辞典例句

24 interred   

v.埋，葬( inter的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Marie Curie's remains were exhumed and interred in the Pantheon. 玛丽·居里的遗体被移出葬在先贤祠中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The body was interred at the cemetery. 遗体埋葬在公墓里。 来自《简明英汉词典》

25 cemeteries   

n.（非教堂的）墓地，公墓( cemetery的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like. 不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• In other districts the proximity of cemeteries seemed to aggravate the disease. 在其它地区里，邻近墓地的地方，时疫大概都要严重些。 来自辞典例句

26 wagons   

n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车

参考例句：

• The wagons were hauled by horses. 那些货车是马拉的。
• They drew their wagons into a laager and set up camp. 他们把马车围成一圈扎起营地。

27 cemetery   

n.坟墓，墓地，坟场

参考例句：

• He was buried in the cemetery.他被葬在公墓。
• His remains were interred in the cemetery.他的遗体葬在墓地。

28 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

29 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

30 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

31 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。