events
The Willow Island disaster was the collapse of a cooling tower under construction at the Pleasants Power Station at Willow Island, West Virginia, on April 27, 1978. Fifty-one construction workers were killed. It is thought to be the deadliest construction accident in U.S. history.
A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or, in the case of dry cooling towers, rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature using radiators.
Pleasants Power Station is a 1.3-gigawatt coal power plant located near Belmont, West Virginia in Pleasants County, West Virginia. The plant is owned by Energy Harbor and began operations in 1979. The power plant was the site of the Willow Island disaster in 1978.
Willow Island is an unincorporated community in Pleasants County, West Virginia, United States. Willow Island is located on the Ohio River at the junction of West Virginia Route 2 and County Highway 10, 3 miles (4.8 km) west-southwest of Belmont. Willow Island had a post office, which opened on October 17, 1946, and closed on May 25, 1991. The Pleasants Power Station, site of the 1978 Willow Island disaster, is located in Willow Island. This is the location of Willow Island Baptist Church and Willow Island Cemetery, the burial site for many of the area's founding and prominent families. Willow Island was also the location of Cyanamid; later called Cytec Industries, a chemical plant and a large contributor to the Pleasants County school system and area's work force.
April 27 is the 117th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 248 days remain until the end of the year.