Thirty years later, I still get an eerie feeling when I drive by the gigantic towers where 51 workers died on April 27, 1978. Both towers are so close to the highway. The tragedy happened at the one closest to the road. People like me know the location where the ring marks the spot where construction resumed 17 months later.
Thirty years later, I still get an eerie feeling when I drive by the gigantic towers where 51 workers died on April 27, 1978. Both towers are so close to the highway. The tragedy happened at the one closest to the road. People like me know the location where the ring marks the spot where construction resumed 17 months later.
A Willow Island monument sits along W.Va. 2. Its concrete shape echoes the nearby tower, and a bronze plaque lists all 51 victims.
On the black day that the Pleasants Power Station cooling tower No. 2 collapsed, I'd been in Morgantown 10 years, having intended to go forward after school to any place I could find a good job ... I didn't know it when I woke up, but my life was about to take a clear turn toward home.
* * *
I think of the enormous sadness of the families, co-workers and friends who must recall the vividness of the cooling tower collapse. I would not bring up the topic except in the hope that we may we learn from this loss and never forget it for the sake of safer workplaces.
My father, Richard Burkhammer, was an electrician foreman there at the time. It was his last job before retirement. He never spoke about what he saw. I grew up on nearby Schultz Road, about 4 miles from the power plant. ... grew up with many of the men that had been on the cooling tower. We rode the school bus together for years; we played baseball. I remember Ernie especially, how he looked in his ball uniform, how he sounded during a game ... Ernie: quick as a cat ... tough as a crowbar .... Some of us had gone all through school together, starting at Belmont Elementary School. I remember burying my head in the grass during one of the 1950s bomb drills, right beside Ronnie Steele. He'd had polio as a boy. Ernie and Ronnie were among the guys who lost their lives at work that April day. Losing them all at once was hard to take, and like a magnet, it pulled me home.
* * *
It was a warm, sunny day in Westover, and I woke up with a bad hangover, which wasn't anything unusual for me back then. I flipped on a little radio and heard the news. It seemed unbelievable. I threw all of my stuff in the car, and took off for Pleasants County. When I got there, I went to the Rose Chalet, a bar across from the power station, and started throwing down shots of tequila and talking to people. A lot of people were very riled up, ready to fight. Some of them did. Not only that: They did not want to talk to journalists. The weekly newspaper editor then was Roy Owens, and he did a thorough job of covering the whole thing. The people could relate to him better than they could someone from Charleston or New York. Reporters from all over descended on that little county. Some of them stereotyped the good people there, and it wasn't appreciated.
Thirty years later, I still get an eerie feeling when I drive by the gigantic towers where 51 workers died on April 27, 1978. Both towers are so close to the highway. The tragedy happened at the one closest to the road. People like me know the location where the ring marks the spot where construction resumed 17 months later.
On the black day that the Pleasants Power Station cooling tower No. 2 collapsed, I'd been in Morgantown 10 years, having intended to go forward after school to any place I could find a good job ... I didn't know it when I woke up, but my life was about to take a clear turn toward home.
* * *
I think of the enormous sadness of the families, co-workers and friends who must recall the vividness of the cooling tower collapse. I would not bring up the topic except in the hope that we may we learn from this loss and never forget it for the sake of safer workplaces.
My father, Richard Burkhammer, was an electrician foreman there at the time. It was his last job before retirement. He never spoke about what he saw. I grew up on nearby Schultz Road, about 4 miles from the power plant. ... grew up with many of the men that had been on the cooling tower. We rode the school bus together for years; we played baseball. I remember Ernie especially, how he looked in his ball uniform, how he sounded during a game ... Ernie: quick as a cat ... tough as a crowbar .... Some of us had gone all through school together, starting at Belmont Elementary School. I remember burying my head in the grass during one of the 1950s bomb drills, right beside Ronnie Steele. He'd had polio as a boy. Ernie and Ronnie were among the guys who lost their lives at work that April day. Losing them all at once was hard to take, and like a magnet, it pulled me home.
* * *
It was a warm, sunny day in Westover, and I woke up with a bad hangover, which wasn't anything unusual for me back then. I flipped on a little radio and heard the news. It seemed unbelievable. I threw all of my stuff in the car, and took off for Pleasants County. When I got there, I went to the Rose Chalet, a bar across from the power station, and started throwing down shots of tequila and talking to people. A lot of people were very riled up, ready to fight. Some of them did. Not only that: They did not want to talk to journalists. The weekly newspaper editor then was Roy Owens, and he did a thorough job of covering the whole thing. The people could relate to him better than they could someone from Charleston or New York. Reporters from all over descended on that little county. Some of them stereotyped the good people there, and it wasn't appreciated.
* * *
Pleasants County ... geographically the land in the area is relatively flat, sharing characteristics with Ohio.... People put a high value on education; even those who don't go to college usually learn trades.... Many people own farms or a little bit of land, and work there too - working, active all the time. Yet they aren't isolated by work or the hills. Their focus on family keeps them connected to each other and to the community as a whole.
The families I knew - the Steeles and Blouirs and some others - were skilled workers who did some of the most difficult and challenging jobs in the world. Mrs. Steele - Lillie Steele - lost a son, four grandsons and two great-grandsons. It was a large family, in a small county. When she died several years later she had almost 200 descendants.
Dana Hornish, who later became my brother-in-law, worked there in the supply warehouse, which was a big hub of the Willow Island site ... not just the towers, but a whole plant was being built. He said folks don't reflect on that day in April or talk about it much anymore. It's not that it's too painful to talk about, he said. "It's just that most of those people have moved out and moved on, and you don't hear many people who even know about it much."
He dealt with people who worked on the cooling tower, on a daily basis at the warehouse. There were a lot of carpenters and steelworkers on the cooling tower. Some of the workers had to check tools in and out every day there, and my brother-in-law says he saw some of those guys roughly 20 or 30 minutes before the tower collapsed. Men who had just visited the warehouse ... their lives vanished. "That was quite an ordeal," he said recently. "That things happened so fast - it was like somebody reached down in a big swoop, and took a handful of people."
* * *
Last time I saw one of the surviving Steele brothers - Bob I think - it was probably a Saturday ... my mom and I were visiting a little country churchyard where some of our relatives from way back are buried. Bob was alone and sweeping ladybugs off the side of the white Methodist Church on Schultz Road, taking care of the place so it would be ready for the next morning's service. We stopped and talked a while, then turned away, and he kept on working. We never spoke about the tragedy that was a huge turning point for many people.
I hesitate to bring up this terrible day to survivors, but I need to bear witness to the accident that otherwise might get lost in history. A combination of serious safety violations was found to have caused the disaster. Those workers gave their lives over unsafe working conditions. For their sakes and the workers now - the people who still work on dangerous jobs - the rest of us must remember.
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Watch an audio slideshow with historic photos 
PDF of The Charleston Gazette, the day after the disaster (7.4MB) 
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