The following excerpt from "The Hawks Nest Tunnel: An Unabridged History," represents the beginning of Phillipa Allen's statements to the Congressional subcommittee investigating the disaster at Hawks Nest.
I found when I went to Gauley Bridge that men were still dying like flies in 1934.
These were men who characterized themselves as generally following the mines as a
trade. Mining in West Virginia is unsteady, and these men went into this tunnel work
because they thought it offered opportunity for steady work at better wages, and that it
was work which did not posses the hazards they had met in mining coal, such hazards
being poisonous gases and falling rocks.
Of the 2,000 men employed there over a period of nearly 3 years, many have been
examined by private doctors. Men began to succumb to the bad conditions within one,
two or three years after they started to engage in the work. It seems that only a few of
the 2,000 men affected will escape.
The heroic story of how a small group of people, few of them TB experts, found the cure for the greatest killer in human history. But the battle needed to be extended to all sufferers. Why have we failed to take the miracle to the developing world?
