The 2008 coal ash disaster in Kingston, Tennessee

O n December 22, 2008, Ansol Clark woke to a ringing phone. It was sometime before 6 a.m., far earlier than he had intended to get up. He drove construction trucks for a living, but he’d been furloughed recently, leaving him little to do in the three days before Christmas except wrap gifts and watch movies with his grown son, Bergan. The house was dark. Janie, Ansol’s wife of thirty-six years, slipped out of bed, stepped across the bedroom, and disappeared through the doorway that led into the kitchen. A light clicked on, and the ringing stopped. She returned to the bedroom. “It’s for you,” she told Ansol. In the kitchen, Ansol, groggy, picked up the landline from its place atop the bread box. You need to get up, a man told him, and you need to get up right away. Ansol recognized the caller’s voice: it belonged to his supervisor, a general foreman named Tim Henry. “Get to Kingston,” Henry added. “They’ve had a blowout down here.” Ansol, needing no further explanation, hung up. Janie ... Read full article.