Sandhog

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Sandhogs in New York City's East Side Access East Side Access tunneling 2012-09-20 2.jpg
Sandhogs in New York City's East Side Access

Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners and construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City, [1] and later other cities. [2] Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road building, or some other type of underground construction or mining projects. The miners work with a variety of tools including using tunnel boring machines and explosives to remove material for the project they are building. The term sandhog is an American colloquialism.

Contents

Starting with their first job in 1872, the Brooklyn Bridge, the "hogs" have built a large part of the New York City infrastructure including the subway tunnels and sewers, Water Tunnels No. 1 and No. 2 as well as the currently under construction Water Tunnel No. 3, the Lincoln, Holland, Queens-Midtown, and Brooklyn-Battery tunnels. In addition, they worked on the foundations for most of the bridges and many of the skyscrapers in the city. Traditionally, these workers have been Irish or Irish American. Some West Indians are now sandhogs. Sandhogging is often a tradition and is passed down through generations of families; since mining projects span decades, it is not uncommon for multi-generations of families to work together on the same job. [3] Warren Beatty was a rare exception in the 1950s, as a recently-arrived to New York individual, who worked as a Sandhog relatively briefly on the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel. [4]

Occupational hazards

Sandhogs are subject to numerous occupational hazards; the construction of a water tunnel under New York City resulted in the deaths of 23 workers [5] and one child, who fell into an unsecured shaft, [6] over 46 years of excavation. [7] Historically, work in pneumatic caissons underwater exposed workers to the risk of decompression sickness upon rapid emergence. [8] In addition to risk of physical injury, sandhogs laboring alongside tunnel boring machines can experience respiratory damage due to dust exposure. [7]

Appearances in media

Literature

Movies

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References

  1. "The Men Who Make New York Work". NYC Sandhogs Local 147. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
  2. "A History of BART".
  3. Fisher, Ian (November 28, 1993). "Tunneling Into a World of Danger; Fatal Accident Puts Spotlight on Sandhogs' Perilous Job". The New York Times. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
  4. Interview with Warren Beatty, wmagazine.com. Accessed October 25, 2022.
  5. "Memorial to Tunnel Workers Who Lost Their Lives During Construction of City Water Tunnel No. 3 Planned for Van Cortlandt Site in the Bronx" (Press release). Flushing, New York. New York City Department of Environmental Protection. October 31, 2000. Retrieved April 4, 2023.
  6. Reale, Nicholas (August 26, 2015). "The Fresh-Water Beast Beneath New York's Streets". Narratively. Retrieved April 4, 2023.
  7. 1 2 Furfaro, Danielle (September 28, 2016). "The dangers sandhogs face every day for you to commute". The New York Post. Retrieved April 4, 2023.
  8. Butler, W.P. (2004). "Caisson disease during the construction of the Eads and Brooklyn Bridges: A review". Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine. 31 (4): 445–459. PMID   15686275.
  9. "softskull.com". Archived from the original on January 6, 2011.
  10. "City of Water" (abstract), The New Yorker, September 1, 2003.
  11. "Sandhogs - 800 feet below NYC streets". A&E Television Networks. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009. Retrieved October 31, 2008.
  12. "Cities". Radiolab Podcasts | WNYC Studios. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  13. Penn Station The American Experience
  14. 99% Invisible Episode 158: Sandhogs
  15. IMDB: Scorpion Season 3 Episode 14 (Jan 2017)
  16. Scorpion s03e14 Episode Script

Further reading